Premptive "House Cleaning" Linked to FBI's Affordable Housing Probe??

Chris Essel and City Controller Wendy Greuel

CDR Financial Products Inc. David Rubin

Let's call this journalistic intuition.

With yesterday's announcement of the FBI's probe into an City of Los Angeles affordable-housing deal that funneled $26 million to a developer that city housing officials knew who was under criminal investigation for alleged misuse of public funds, in an unrelated case. Many within the local political community are speculating whether this is an preemptive attempt to shield City Hall politicos from possible damaging disclosures

CDR Financial Products Inc. David Rubin, who according to blogger Luke Ford, has deep ties to the Orthodox Jewish Community in Hancock Park, has long-time ties to the Los Angeles political community, serving two plus years as an commissioner of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles.

For years, stories and rumors have been rampant about nefarious dealings connected to the City of Los Angeles Housing Program, which we have reported on here in the past at Mayor Sam

Insomuch as David Rubin is be investigated for bid-rigging in the New York Indictment, we can go back in time to revisit the alleged bid-rigging that took place, regarding work at the Estrada Courts Housing Projects.

As the LA Times reported then, "representatives of two of the firms -- the Estrada Courts Residents Management Corp. and Grande Vista Associates -- denied any knowledge of rigged competitions. The head of the third, KV and Co., did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The Estrada Courts group, a nonprofit run out of an Eastside housing project, received four contracts collectively worth about $95,000. It has employed former City Councilman Richard Alatorre as a consultant.
Grande Vista is headed by political consultant Gustavo Valdivia, a former member of Councilman Jose Huizar's staff. It landed a $98,895 contract".

Now that the FBI is investigating the contract awarded to Rubin, would it be prudent of the FBI to investigate whether Rubin in his role as an HACLA Commissioner, use his vote to support other bid-rigging schemes??

Also an interesting sidebar angle to explore here is whether schemes such as these are the model for future plans to reward connected firms, who would received contracts for affordable housing in the City of Los Angeles.

It was evident during the CD 2 Special Election, that a coalition of unions, developers, non- profits housing groups were supporting the campaign of Chris Essel. With Essel's name being batted around as the possible head of the Community Redevelopment Agency (which is one of the largest builder of affordable housing), one can speculate that City Controller Wendy Greuel is using her auditing authority to sanitize the past dirty dealings in the cities housing departments to manage political damage and create new ground rules for the award of future housing contracts.

Your thoughts..........

Scott Johnson in CD 14