Businessmen accused of laundering money to Villaraigosa's campaign

Two Florida businessmen who allegedly hoped to win lucrative concession contracts from Los Angeles International Airport were charged Wednesday with conspiring to launder more than $25,000 in political donations to Antonio Villaraigosa’s 2005 mayoral campaign, authorities said.

Los Angeles County prosecutors alleged in court documents that Sean Anderson and Richard W. Manhire -- executives at Miami-based Travel Traders -- donated the money in the names of employees and associates between September 2004 and April 2005.

City Hall records show that the first of the tainted donations were made a day after Villaraigosa had dinner with Anderson. Villaraigosa, who campaigned on a pledge to restore trust in city government, has insisted that the two men never discussed airport concessions.

Prosecutors said Villaraigosa cooperated with their investigation and noted that his campaign reported the donations as the law required. Villaraigosa later returned the contributions after news reports that raised questions about the money.

Anderson, 44, and Manhire, 39, told employees they wanted to raise campaign cash for Villaraigosa in order to obtain airport concession contracts, a district attorney’s spokeswoman said. The executives allegedly had the company’s treasurer collect $1,000 each from employees, who were reimbursed with cash from the company’s accounts, spokeswoman Jane Robison said.

She said $45,000 was delivered to Villaraigosa’s campaign from the men, of which $39,000 was allegedly laundered contributions.

-- Jack Leonard

Photo: Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Fred]

I am a Democrat, but I personally don't like our major trying to promote prop B for the solar power in most buildings in LA with the DWP as an administrator. Currently we have the best technology (State of the Art!!) with this manufacturer www.solyndra.com, their circular solar cells are the most efficient in the world, unless new tech discoveries are up tomorrow. Our major and maybe some interested parties will grant the bid to one of the low tech cheap technology available and God knows what ells more. The bid for the Solar cells should be an open and public bid, open to the public and to an impartial engineering group to evaluate the probable bidders. That's all folks for now! Ari

[Patrick Cleary]

It would have been nice to know Villaraigosa was as corrupt as his smarmy ways lead one to believe before I voted for him last night.

[TheTroll]

Very nice LA-Times. Posting this after the election. Now I'm wondering how much you guys got paid to post this the day after people voted. Mabye, about $39,000. What a joke the LA-times has become.

[mark wright]

I already knew Villaraigosa is a downright crook and liar.

Once again the citizens of LA have elected the candidate who is only looking out for his own best interest.

Screw you Anthony .

Mark Wright

[Diane]

It has been fashionable in recent times to separate the private and public lives of politicians, as though a lack of character in private will somehow disappear when the official is involved in public duty. This is a very naive, shallow and almost purposely stupid way of viewing a human being. One's character is usually set by adulthood and rarely changes. Patrick Cleary blames the Times for not breaking this story sooner so that he would not have voted for the Mayor yet he refers to Villaraigosa as being "smarmy". I would ask why he would vote someone he knew to be smarmy into office at all? He could have voted for another candidate, as I did, in the hopes that a small margin of victory would send a message to Villaraigosa that he is nothing more than a default mayor and thus has no mandate. It is important to stand up against behavior unfitting to a representative of our city or we will lose respect in the eyes of the world and, more importantly, in our own eyes.

[camilo]

i'm a democrat but i specifically voted against villaraigosa because he can't be trusted as a leader with the city's interests in mind. he dabbles a little here and a little there on various subjects of relevance e.g. crime, education, environment, transportation etc. to make it seem like he's doing something but in the end over the last 4 years he has hardly done anything to really change much. all he is good for is smiling for the cameras and advancing his own political career. to me he represents everything i hate about politics.

[Kathleen]

"You get what you pay for." Every special interest group, including LaRaza, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and corrupt businessmen get more than they paid for with Villaraigosa. Why is it that the businessmen get charged, yet the recipient who bribed them only has to "return the donations?"

[M Hurley]

This guy thinks he's Clinton. Bare in mind that Clinton also pardoned Mark Rich who was never tried for stealing billions from this country. That's where he learned that people forget even when you cheat on your wife and family. Why would you people vote in a man with no principals or scruples..? Good ole LA just as permissive as ever. When a politician is allowed to act with impunity just remember you voted his sorry ass into office. When are we going to learn eh...? When are we going to grow up as a community...? Its a tragic state of affairs.

[mando]

Once again the LA Times delays the publishing of this story to benefit their puppet mayor, Wonder whose ASS he kissed?
So when is the LA Times shutting down operations?

[Steph]

I am REALLY hoping you guys weren't holding on to this until the day after the election. Good thing my instincts were right.

[Duane]

What a surprise. HA HA

[My Suspicion]

What REALLY IS SNEAKY is DA Cooley "deciding to prosecute" these two guys in Miami just now, 4 years after the 05 election, the day after County DA Cooley's pet candidate/ pal Trutnuch came in 2nd in the city atty race and is likely to be badly defeated in the run-off. This article makes clear that the Mayor returned the money as soon as he was made aware of possible taint.

The OTHER candidate, front-runner Councilman Weiss, is being supported by the Mayor. HELLO, connect the dots. The D A Cooley even made personal, gratuitous and quite mean-spirited comments yesterday about this leading candidate in order to try to sway public opinion toward his pet.

D A Cooley is not only backing Trutnuch but recruited him to run and has bent over backwards trying to get him endorsements and money based on his own position. Because it's widely known that Cooley wants Trutnuch to run for his own DA job when he's finally termed out in 4 years, and wants him to use the City Atty job for training, since Trutnuch's brief time as a prosecutor was 23 years ago and he's since a private attorney. (Though he fudges his history to make it sound like he was recently and mainly some hard- core gang prosecutor -- wrong, he defends criminals for big bucks.)

The nerve of D A Cooley to be so blatant and brazen just shows how he feels he's above everybody and can do anything without any scrutiny. The Board of Supervisors are nominally his bosses but he was said by those who ran against him during the last election (including an Asst. DA who said he experienced it first-hand) to collect dirt on everyone so that everyone would be afraid of him.

THAT's the real scary story the commenters above who play right into his hands are missing. Yes, attack the timing - but you've got the wrong culprit here.

[Red Sky]

Interesting and not surprise.He has his hopes of running next year for "Governor of Califonia.."Hardly wait for 2010.

[Jenny]

The same thing happened in his District 32 run, but in denominations of $250. This was to get city matching funds. I don't think they can trace it because people were paid cash.