From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Fawell charged in bid-rigging scheme
February 10, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Former Gov. George Ryan's longtime top aide, already serving prison time for
racketeering, was charged Tuesday along with four other people and a
lobbying firm in an alleged $11.5 million bid-rigging scheme as prosecutors
stepped up pressure on him to provide evidence against his one-time boss.
Scott Fawell, 46, was accused of providing inside information to a
contractor, Jacobs Facilities Inc. of St. Louis, that enabled the company to
lower its bid on a major government contract from $18.8 million to $11.5
million and eventually land the job.
The contract was for an expansion at the massive McCormick Place exposition
center on Chicago's downtown lakefront.
Also charged in the indictment were Fawell's top assistant, Andrea
Coutretsis, two former Jacobs Facilities employees, the Chicago-based
lobbying firm of Ronan Potts, and a former Ronan Potts employee, Julie
Starsiak.
Lobbyist Al Ronan, a major Ryan fund-raiser and head of Ronan Potts, was not
charged in the nine-count indictment. The powerful state lobbyist and former
legislator is a close friend of Fawell and his firm represented Jacobs
Facilities.
Ronan Potts attorney James Cutrone said Tuesday that he was confident that
neither Ronan nor his partner, John Potts, would be indicted. He said they
knew nothing about passing bidding information to Jacobs. But Cutrone did
say that an alleged party to the scheme, identified in the indictment only
as Fawell Associate 1, appeared to be Ronan.
"It would be my take on the indictment that Associate 1 is Ronan," Cutrone
said.
In addition to accusing Fawell of providing information to the contractor,
the indictment alleges the former Ryan aide engaged in a fraud scheme by
misusing funds of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which he
headed after Ryan became governor and which operates McCormick Place and
Navy Pier.
Fawell is accused of awarding bogus contracts and favors to vendors, billing
the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority for his legal defense fund,
and billing the authority for $16,500 to cover his own efforts to make sure
no one was eavesdropping on him. Prosecutors said those efforts including
sweeps for bugs in his offices and a contraption disguised to look like a
clock that was designed to tell whether anyone had a hidden recording
device.
"The notion that persons inside McPier provided sealed bid information to a
lobbying firm to pass on to a contractor who used the information to win a
contract is wrong on many levels," U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said
in announcing the indictment.
The fresh indictment brings to 69 the number of state employees and other
charged in the nearly six-year federal corruption investigation, known as
Operation Safe Road. Fifty-nine people have been convicted.
Fawell and Coutretsis had previously been indicted in the investigation.
Fawell was sentenced in June to 6 1/2 years in prison for racketeering, tax
fraud, perjury and obstruction of justice, and Coutretsis agreed in December
to plead guilty to perjury charges.
In the new indictment, Coutretsis, 34, of Long Grove is accused of giving
inside information about the contract to Ronan Potts employee Starsiak, 56,
of Chicago, who is accused of passing the information along to Jacobs
Facilities.
The two Jacobs Facilities employees named in the indictment were charged
with making false statements. James Nagle, 41, of Glen Ellyn, led the
company's efforts to land the McCormick Place project, and Elizabeth Koski,
35, of Elmhurst, was the chief sales person in the effort to land the
contract, prosecutors said.
The federal Operation Safe Road investigation initially focused on the
selling of driver's licenses for bribes at the secretary of state's office,
which oversees the motor vehicle agency. But the investigation was soon
expanded to a range of corruption during Ryan's tenure as secretary of state
in the early 1990s and then as governor from 1998 to 2003.
Fawell served as campaign manager and chief of staff under Ryan when Ryan
was secretary of state and then was appointed to head of the Metropolitan
Pier and Exposition Authority after Ryan became governor.
Ryan, who didn't run for a second term as governor, was charged in December
with illegally steering state contracts and leases to clients of lobbyist
Larry Warner while secretary of state. Both have pleaded innocent and trial
is set for spring 2005.
Fitzgerald declined to comment Tuesday on whether he hoped the fresh charges
would pressure Fawell to testify against Ryan. Asked if he hoped Fawell
would cooperate, he said: "We would say that about any defendant."
The charges against Fawell carry a total of 30 years in prison and $1.5
million in fines, though he would likely get much less time if convicted.
Fawell has maintained he is innocent and knows nothing that would
incriminate Ryan. If he did cooperate, however, the government could ask for
a more lenient sentence.
The federal investigation, meanwhile, is continuing, and according to recent
indictments, so are instances of corruption. Last week, a political
patronage appointee in the secretary of state's office was charged with
pocketing $800 in bribes over the previous three months from motorists
trying to get their suspended licenses back.

Copyright 2004 Associated Press.