By Karen Smith Welch and Kevin Welch
The FBI wants to arrest a former city of Amarillo employee who skipped town when reports surfaced he had been named in a Florida bribery conspiracy investigation.
Federal prosecutors on Wednesday unsealed a criminal complaint charging Jihad El Eid, a former Amarillo traffic engineer, with taking more than $150,000 in bribes in return for securing tens of millions of dollars in Broward County, Fla., construction contracts for a company at the heart of the probe.
El Eid, 53, and his brother, Wael El Eid, 45, are charged with taking bribes involving federal funds, highway fraud, mail fraud and extortion between 2006 and 2010, when Jihad El Eid led Broward County’s Traffic Engineering Division. Jihad El Eid was demoted and then fired by Broward County three months before being hired by the city of Amarillo in December 2010.
The brothers are thought to be out of the country and did not appear in court Wednesday, according to information from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Florida’s Southern District. They face sentences as long as 20 years in prison if convicted, a U.S. Attorney’s Office news release said.
The city of Amarillo fired Jihad El Eid in August 2011 after he used up all his leave time and failed to return to work from Beirut, Lebanon.
He purportedly traveled from Amarillo to Lebanon in July 2011 — the same month his lawyer described him as a “person of interest” in the investigation — to visit his ailing father and, while there, suffered a heart attack.
Yet Jihad El Eid cleared his apartment in Amarillo of all but dirty dishes and rotting food before leaving the country, according to city personnel documents obtained in a September 2011 Amarillo Globe-News open-records request. The paperwork reported Jihad El Eid’s Amarillo apartment manager said he left his keys inside and a bank refused to honor his rent check because his account had been closed.
Jihad El Eid’s attorney, Fred Haddad, could not be reached for comment.
Court records show two executives with the construction company under investigation, Southeast Underground Utilities, were arrested Wednesday. Prosecutors charged company owner Anthoneel Allen and vice president James Hashim with conspiracy in federal court. Chief U.S. Magistrate for the Southern District of Florida Barry Seltzer set bail at $100,000 each.
Allen, 40, and Hashim, 50, waived indictment and pleaded not guilty. However, Hashim has a hearing scheduled on Feb. 1 to change his plea, according to court records.
The Florida investigation was partially based on an anonymous letter that mentioned El Eid and Southeast Underground Utilities. In 2011, the FBI raided the company, a contractor in the initial phases of a proposed $85 million traffic upgrade in Broward County.
Prosecutors allege Jihad El Eid steered federally funded contracts to Southeast Underground, adjusted billing to increase pay the company received for work performed and hiked project budgets to pump up the firm’s profits.
The Broward traffic engineering division has since been reorganized to provide more oversight of contracts and spending, according to a quote attributed to the county public works director by the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Sun-Sentinel newspaper.
The alleged manipulation of one contract alone raised its budget from $6.6 million to $21.2 million over the course of two years, according to court documents. Due to additional work on that particular contract, Southeast Underground Utilities was subsequently paid in excess of $17.5 million, court documents claim.
“Jihad El Eid also assisted SUU concerning billing, specification and inspection matters that resulted in SUU being overpaid by at least $3 million,” U.S. Attorney’s Office information said.
Prosecutors contend Jihad El Eid dangled the promise of lucrative contract work to Southeast Underground Utilities in return for cash payments and a car and job for his brother. The criminal complaint against the El Eid brothers claims Jihad El Eid also said he needed money because his infant son suffered from a serious medical condition.
Wael El Eid aided his brother in the scheme by working for cash at Southeast Underground Utilities and ferrying money and messages between his brother and the company, prosecutors claim.
“Once, after Wael El Eid was told that the … contractor could not pay Jihad El Eid due to the fact that Broward County had not yet paid the … contractor for completed work, Jihad El Eid expedited, obtained and hand-delivered a check from Broward County to the … contractor,” the criminal complaint said.
Allen is charged with a broader conspiracy to fraudulently obtain 25 government contracts from Broward County and other state and local governments in Florida worth more than $10 million, court documents said.
Allen allegedly falsely applied, in 2008, to renew the federal Disadvantaged Business Enterprise status for his company by claiming his personal net worth, excluding the company and his home, was under the $750,000 limit for the status. Prosecutors claim he concealed millions of dollars worth of investments, including ownership of a hotel in Jamaica.
Allen and Hashim also are charged with conspiring to evade paying federal income and employment taxes on bonuses and payments on the purchase of Hashim’s $1.25 million house in Plantation, Fla.
Prosecutors are asking that Allen and Hashim forfeit $3 million in proceeds from the alleged conspiracy if convicted.
Allen’s attorney, Michael Gary Smith, said his client is liquidating his assets to make payment.
“I think it’s going to be resolved, hopefully, without a trial,” Smith said Thursday.
Hashim’s attorney, John Cotrone, declined comment Thursday on the pending charges against his client.
Allen and Hashim each could spend as many as five years in prison if convicted, according to a news release.
Amarillo City Attorney Marcus Norris said city personnel have not been contacted by the FBI since Jihad El Eid’s departure concerning the Florida investigation.
The city of Amarillo acknowledged after the allegations surfaced that its staff had not checked Jihad El Eid’s references before hiring him. City Manager Jarrett Atkinson ordered, at that time, a review of the city’s hiring practices.
On both the application and resume Jihad El Eid submitted in Amarillo, he listed his position as Broward Traffic Engineering Division director, a title he hadn’t held since almost a year earlier. He listed a “change in administration” as the reason he left the Broward job.
Broward County employment records show Jihad El Eid asked for a demotion from his director’s post there in February 2010 due to what he called “current challenges in my personal life” as the controversy grew over the much delayed traffic project.
Documents regarding his termination by Broward County said it was involuntary, but the note was later crossed out with the change initialed on behalf of the county’s human resources director.
This article was written by Karen Smith Welch and Kevin Welch and originally published on amarillo
