The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
The owner of a sewer-inspection and cleaning business admitted Friday that he lied to federal agents when they asked him why he failed to tell City Hall that his company’s investors included the son and a nephew of then-Mayor Richard M. Daley.
At first, when he spoke with investigators on March 10, 2008, Tony Duffy blamed his own “carelessness and negligence” for omitting the names of Patrick R. Daley and Robert G. Vanecko from the ownership documents that Municipal Sewer Services was required to file with City Hall to get millions of dollars worth of city business.
But that was a lie, according to Duffy. He now says he didn’t know at first about Daley and Vanecko’s involvement. He says that, when he found out, he went to Joseph M. McInerney, a principal in Cardinal Growth, a Chicago venture capital firm that also invested in the sewer company, and that McInerney “directed” him not to change the ownership-disclosure filing, to “keep it the same,” according to court records and sources familiar with the case.
McInerney is a friend of Patrick Daley.
Duffy changed his story as part of his plea agreement with federal prosecutors. He did so in hopes of avoiding deportation to his native Scotland, according to his attorney, John Meyer.
You might say who cares about this inside Chicago corruption stuff? There's more:
The U.S. Small Business Administration took control of Cardinal Growth last summer, saying the venture capital firm owed taxpayers $21.4 million. Bobb and McInerney were ousted from Cardinal Growth, which had borrowed more than $50 million from the SBA over a decade — money they used to invest in companies including Municipal Sewer Services, which went out of business four years ago amid the investigation by the FBI and the city inspector general’s office.
Another great investigative report by Tim Novak. This article is well worth your time. Can U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald close his eyes to this?
