An aide to President Barack Obama is on leave from his White House job after the FBI raided his old District of Columbia government office Thursday, arresting a city employee and a technology consultant on corruption charges, a White House official said.
The charges were lodged against the two men at a federal court hearing as the FBI finished searching the city’s technology office, which was led until recently by Obama’s new computer chief, Vivek Kundra.
Kundra , a native of New Delhi , India, is on leave from his White House job until further details of the case become known.
At the court hearing, Yusuf Acar, the acting chief security officer in the city’s technology office, was ordered held without bond pending a hearing Tuesday. Prosecutors said $70,000 in cash was found during a search of Acar’s Washington home and that he posed a serious flight risk.
Acar worked under Kundra, Obama’s pick to coordinate federal computer systems.
Technology consultant Sushil Bansal was released but was ordered not to conduct overseas financial transactions or leave the Washington metropolitan area.
Bansal is due back in court on April 21, and prosecutors said they were hopeful that a plea agreement could be reached in his case.
Acar, a 40-year-old native of Turkey, had a $127,468-a-year position purchasing the city’s computer equipment and lining up contract workers for numerous city agencies, according to court documents.
Authorities say Acar and Bansal, along with others, defrauded the government through a variety of schemes, including billing the city for items that were never delivered and “ghost” contract employees who did not work.
The scheme involved Acar approving falsified bills and splitting the money with vendors including Bansal, who submitted them, court documents alleged.
The report says that an FBI affidavit supporting the arrest warrants indicates that several other businesses and individuals were involved in the alleged schemes but were not named.
The FBI worked with another employee in the city’s technology office, who was in on the scheme and secretly recorded conversations with Acar and Bansal as part of the investigation.
In 2007, federal investigators uncovered a massive embezzlement scheme in the city’s tax office.
Men and women dressed in suits and wearing latex gloves could be seen entering and leaving the glass-enclosed lobby of the Office of the Chief Technology Officer on Thursday afternoon.
Ironically, even as the raid was taking place, Kundra was giving a speech at FOSE, an annual government technology expo.
Kundra said part of his focus is to change the way the government buys technologies from vendors.
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