Rahm Emanuel’s Handpicked Comptroller Guilty in Bribery Scheme

A public official chosen by President Obama’s former chief of staff to oversee the finances of a major U.S. city faces more than a decade in jail for operating a huge kickback and money-laundering scheme as Ohio’s deputy state treasurer.

Nevertheless Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s good pal and one-time White House chief of staff, hired the corrupt official, Amer Ahmad, to be Chicago Comptroller. If you recall, Emanuel left his presidential job to become mayor of the Windy City in 2011. Before joining the Obama administration Emanuel served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and as a senior advisor in the Bill Clinton White House.

Yet, Emanuel claims through aides that he had no idea he was hiring a crook to supervise the city’s finances, though the mayor refuses to comment on his friend’s bribery scandal. A Chicago newspaper reports that City Hall hired a law firm to vet Ahmad and it confirmed no criminal wrongdoing by the former Ohio deputy state treasurer. Ahmad, who resigned abruptly as Chicago Comptroller in July, joined the Emanuel administration in 2011.

This week in a Cincinnati federal court Ahmad pleaded guilty to bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery, money laundering and wire fraud. The feds say he used his Ohio government job to secure “lucrative state business” for his high school buddy in exchange for more than half a million dollars in kickbacks. Besides facing up to 15 years in prison, Ahmad agreed to pay more than $3.2 million in restitution and $500,000 in fines, according to his plea agreement.

Attached to the plea document is the federal complaint outlining Ahmad’s illicit kickback scheme. Even though he was Ohio’s Chief Financial Officer and Deputy Treasurer, Ahmad was the president of one company and partial owner of another, the complaint says. Those are the businesses that were used to funnel the state money. The purpose of the conspiracy was clear, the complaint says; for the defendants to enrich themselves, their friends and associates.

This is hardly the first scandal to rock the Emanuel administration in its short tenure at the helm of Chicago City Hall. Emanuel got in trouble for unlawfully accessing the private information of Chicago public employees in an effort to get their support for his mayoral candidacy. Union leaders were up in arms and city employees accused him of invading their privacy. Then, the co-chair of Emanuel’s mayoral campaign, a high-level state employee, quit abruptly for illegally using public resources to conduct political business.

For his many transgressions, Emanuel has also appeared on Judicial Watch’s annual most corrupt politicians list. In 2010 Emanuel teamed up with his then Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina to interfere with Senate elections in two states by offering federal appointments to persuade candidates not favored by Obama to abandon their campaigns. Emanuel was also Obama’s chief negotiator with convicted Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich as he tried to illegally sell Obama’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder, according to sworn testimony during Blagojevich’s federal trial. Judicial Watch covered both of Blagojevich’s trials in Chicago federal court. The jury deadlocked in the first trial and convicted him of 17 corruption charges in the second. The disgraced politician is serving a 14-year sentence in a Colorado federal prison.