Thursday, April 9, 2009

Only political will can stop minority contract fraud

Sun-Times:
You may have read this week that a major contractor was charged with fraud for allegedly stiffing minority subcontractors on their shares of city work and deceiving public officials about it.

Castle Construction and its owner, Robert Blum, are accused of taking public money reserved for minority subcontractors and pocketing it instead.

The charges from Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office came down a day after Chicago Sun-Times reporter Tim Novak broke the story that Castle had received a $10 million contract from the city to build a Rogers Park fire station but then allegedly stiffed a minority subcontractor on promised masonry work and hired a company owned by white people instead.

Such criminal charges are rare, but the practice of white contractors paying lip service to minority set-asides while working to get around them -- and getting away with it -- is nothing new.

No comments:

Post a Comment

PLEASE READ FIRST!!!! Comment Moderating and Anonymous Comment Policy

While anonymous comments are not prohibited we do encourage you to help readers identify you so that other commenters may respond to you. Either read the moderating policy for how or leave an identifier (which could be a nickname for example) at the end of the comment.

Also note that this blog is NOT associated with any public or political officials including Alderman Roderick T. Sawyer!