The feds charge the mighty Ald. Edward Burke with corruption

Longtime Ald. Edward Burke, one of Chicago's most powerful personalities and a vestige of the city's old democrat machine, was charged with extorting attempt for allegedly using his alderman's position to solicit so corrupted business for his private law firm.

A version of this story indicated that Burke had already made himself. He should do it Thursday afternoon.

The criminal complaint filed in federal court arrives five weeks after the FBI carried out a staggering raid against Burke City Hall's office. for hours behind brown paper butchery windows before going down a back staircase with computers and files.

According to the only charge, Burke tried in 2017 to extort a fast food company owner in Chicago and in need of help. with license for a work of transformation.

The 37-page complaint revealed that the authorities had obtained the agreement of a judge to allow telephone tapping on Burke's cell phone in order to record many calls. The evidence also includes e-mails and other documents, according to the complaint filed Wednesday and unsealed Thursday.

The complaint also alleged that Burke illegally solicited a campaign gift from a catering company executive for another politician, who does not bear the name

In his ascent to political power, Burke also built a lucrative business as one of the most important appeals in politics. 39; property tax of the city. lawyers, regularly saving millions of dollars on their tax accounts to some of Chicago's largest commercial interests.

He was known in the 1980s as a key player in the "Council Wars", which sparked racial disintegration, when a group of white sheriffs led by him and Ald. Vrdolyak clashes with Harold Washington, often blocking the initiatives of Chicago's first black mayor.

More than a quarter of a century later, Burke and Vrdolyak were reunited in a strange sense: they are both subject to criminal charges in Dirksen's court of law. United States. , who was convicted of real estate fraud years after leaving the city council and served a one-year prison sentence, he should be tried in April for tax-related charges arising from the massive settlement concluded with a tobacco company in the 1990s.

Fifty years in politics, Burke has already been subject to several federal controls, but never charged.

In 2012, the city's Inspector General, Joseph Ferguson, asked access to Workplace Compensation Program documents to assess wastefulness and inefficiency Burke denied access to these records to Ferguson, claiming that they did not fall within the purview of The same year, in January 2006, a federal grand jury summoned the program database, injury files, medical assessments and investigation files. compensation

Federal Authorities [19659004] Federal authorities also asked the Burke Finance Bureau to record documents in 1995 as part of the Haunted Hall operation – a ghost payroll-focused investigation that led to the conviction of 39, about three dozen elected officials, their political friends and their loved ones.

Marie D'Amico, daughter of the current 39th Ward Ald. Anthony Laurino served between 1999 and 1993 in the Finance Committee, where he was supposed to oversee workers' compensation claims, the federal authorities said at the time. At the time, Burke accused a dead man – Horace Lindsay, Amico's supervisor on the finance committee – of falsifying time sheets to cover his behavior.

"I do not supervise the staff," Burke said at the time. "Do you think I should know where everyone is, the 75 or 80 people or whoever is there?"

At the time, officials had closely examined Burke since the previous Ald. Joseph A. Martinez, a lawyer at Burke's private law firm and former staff member of the Finance Committee, pleaded guilty to charges of having held ghost jobs on three city council committees while he was in office. he was working full time for Burke's law firm.

At the end of 1997, Burke was again under investigation, this time by a federal grand jury. At the time, Burke and 11th Ward Ald. Patrick Huels, the former mayor's floor officer at the time, Richard M. Daley, pulled the federal saddle. The grand jury assigned the financial records of the two aldermen, their personal campaign committees and the financial payments granted by the Finance Committee and the Transportation Committee, then chaired by Huels. Huels had recently resigned after confessing borrowed $ 1.25 million from a friend of Daley, also an entrepreneur in the city.

In 1998, federal agents summoned financial documents from the city to Michael Pedicone, a lawyer with the Burke Finance Committee. President of a security company participating in a survey of financial transactions of the town hall. Burke was the licensee responsible for the security firm SDI Security Inc. Huels was the owner.

The loan that led to the resignation of Huels helped to bail out the security agency that was owed to the Internal Revenue Service for not paying

at the time, Burke had resisted calls for resignation, claiming that the committee had paid $ 490,000 in legal fees to the committee since 1989, primarily to represent the city in the claims filed by employees injured at work .

"I have no intention of resigning," said Burke, "simply because I did not do anything wrong".

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