Former executives of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power have agreed to plead bribery charges in corruption cases involving utility companies and City Atty. Prosecutors said Monday that Mike Fair's office.

Officials said David H. Wright of Riverside, 62, accepted a bribe from a lawyer in exchange for a $30 million no-bid DWP contract. Wright also admitted in the plea agreement that he was involved in several other corruption projects during his tenure as the head of DWP.

The lawyer who received the contract from the company, Paul Paradis, agreed last week to plead guilty to one count of bribery in a plan that involved him receiving $2.2 million in kickbacks from another lawyer. Prosecutors said on Monday that by late March 2019, Paradis had “secretly cooperated” with the FBI.

The FBI raided the DWP and the City Attorney's Office in July 2019, prompting Mayor Eric Garcetti to remove Wright from office.

In the plea agreement, Wright admitted that he was involved in a conspiracy of bribery and wire fraud, soliciting bribes, destroying evidence, and deliberately making false statements to FBI agents and federal prosecutors.

Wright's lawyer, Anthony Pacheco, did not respond to a request for comment.

The agreement explains how Wright was selected by Garcetti as the general manager of DWP in 2016 and how he established a close relationship with Paradis. The New York City Attorney Paradis was hired by the New York City Attorney's Office to sue PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consulting firm dedicated to launching a new DWP billing system.

Lawyer agrees to plead guilty to bribery in a kickback program related to the DWP billing case

Paul Paradis is a lawyer hired by City Atty. Mike Feuer's office has agreed to plead guilty to one count of bribery stemming from the LADWP 2013 billing scandal.

The launch of DWP billing was a disaster, causing hundreds of thousands of customers to receive incorrect bills.

The agreement stated that Wright and Paradis met in a hotel restaurant on the riverfront in February 2017 and discussed Paradis’ intentions to create a new company, Aventador Utility Solutions LLC, in order to seek a lucrative contract with DWP.

According to the plea agreement, Wright and Paradis "co-opted the name of the company,'Aventador', which is the model name of the luxury car company Lamborghini."

The agreement stipulates that Wright will ensure that DWP's five-member committee awards the contract without competitive bidding. In exchange, after Wright retires from the utility company, Paradis will appoint Wright as CEO of Aventador, with a salary of $1 million.

"Wright and Paradis further discussed the need to keep their agreement confidential because they knew it was illegal," the agreement said.

According to the agreement, Wright worked with Paradis and an unnamed "LADWP senior executive" to "draft and refine" the letter urging the DWP committee to approve the contract.

The agreement stated that at the June 2017 board meeting, Wright did not disclose to the board members his plans to work at Aventador after retirement.

The two also collaborated in other ways. The agreement stated that after the two traveled to Israel in 2018, Wright and Paradis developed a plan to bring an online company to Los Angeles. Paradis will invest USD 5 million in capital and have a controlling interest, while Wright will have an ownership interest.

Wright told Paradis that DWP will purchase five years of cyber security training at the franchise facility for $3 million per year.

The Times previously reported that according to a contract proposal signed between Aventador and the Southern California Public Power Authority (its members include more than a dozen utility companies) in March 2019, Aventador plans to operate a company focused on cybersecurity in downtown Los Angeles. s company.

In March 2019, Wright learned that Paradis was forced to quit his job in the city in the PricewaterhouseCoopers case. This happened after the lawyer of the consulting firm revealed that Paradis had a conflict because he also represented the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against DWP against billing errors.

Around that time, the DWP board also cancelled the $30 million contract.

According to the agreement, in March 2019, Wright told Paradis at a meeting at his home that he was "worried that their relationship and their corrupt plans for Aventador would be discovered."

According to the agreement, Wright instructed Paradis to "destroy their guilty text messages and emails" from Wright's phone and Apple's iCloud. Wright told Paradis that he had passed his DWP office and "destroyed all guilty physical evidence," the agreement stated.

According to prosecutors, Paradis is cooperating with the FBI by then.

Column: The ongoing DWP scandal is a stain on the leaders of Los Angeles and an insult to taxpayers

The details of the complex case involving the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power created confusion that was not easy to clean up.

Wright’s plea agreement also describes what happened to a downtown cafe in April 2019, where Paradis left Wright a paper bag containing a “wiped cell phone and a burner phone”. .

"Just as they agreed before the encounter, the defendant Wright entered the cafe and saw Paradis sitting near the back with a paper bag on the table. The defendant Wright sent a pre-arranged signal, Parady Si put the bag on the table and walked to the bathroom," the agreement said. According to the agreement, Wright then left with the bag.

In April 2019, Wright also urged the DWP board of directors to award a new contract worth more than $10 million to Ardent, Aventador's successor company. According to the agreement, Wright did not disclose to the board that Ardent "will benefit him financially." The agreement states that in April and May 2019, Wright asked Paradis to provide a "mass signing" bonus of $600,000 and increase his interest in the company.

According to the agreement, Wright voluntarily accepted an interview with the FBI in June 2019. In the interview, he falsely stated that he did not have any financial or commercial interests in any company associated with Paradis, including future financial or commercial interests.

Prosecutors said Wright will face up to 10 years in prison.

Bill Funderburk (Bill Funderburk), a former board member who voted on the Aventador agreement, is also involved in a bribery scheme involving non-bid contracts. Funderburk's lawyer denied wrongdoing by his client, and Funderburk has not been charged.

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Dakota Smith reports on Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and City Hall for the Los Angeles Times.

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