ATLANTA — A former Atlanta-based business leader was sentenced Wednesday for bribing officials of two local governments to win bids for state construction contracts.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced Lohrasb “Jeff” Jafari will serve five years in prison and three years of supervised release.
As previously reported by Channel 2′s Tom Regan, Jafari admitted to paying bribes to Atlanta city officials and a former DeKalb county official in a pay-to-play scandal investigated by Channel 2 Action News for years.
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The contracts for construction were awarded to his former engineering firm, PRAD Group, Inc., where he was the Executive Vice President.
Federal prosecutors said Jafari made tens of thousands of dollars by bribing high-ranking government officials and never paying taxes on the millions he earned after.
Jafari was indicted in 2019, charged via a 50-count indictment.
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Jafari was a contractor and campaign contributor to multiple city politicians, including members of the city council and former mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.
According to the indictment, Jafari had paid bribes to Adam Smith, a former Chief Procurement for the City of Atlanta, and while under investigation had urged him to lie to federal agents about the bribes.
“Jeff Jafari paid bribe after bribe to high-ranking government officials in the City of Atlanta and DeKalb County over several years and thereby obtained lucrative city contracts worth tens of millions of dollars,” U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan said. “The public paid a heavy price from every project unfairly awarded to Jafari’s companies through corruption, and he then compounded his harm by never paying any tax on his substantial personal income. His greed delivered a hard blow to public trust in honest and fair government, but this sentence underscores our commitment to prosecuting corruption in any form.”
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According to officials, PRAD Group performed architectural and design services for the City of Atlanta and DeKalb County from 1984 to 2018. From January 2003 to February 2017, Smith was the Chief Procurement Officer for Atlanta, while Jo Ann Macrina was the city’s Commissioner of the Department of Watershed Management from 2011 to 2016.
Jafari gave both Smith and Macrina cash and other valuable items to get business dealings with the City of Atlanta through millions of dollars of contracts to PRAD Group or projects it was a partner in.
A similar process was underway in DeKalb County when a confidential source told the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the pay-to-play dealings by Jafari. On top of the bribery, federal officials said Jafari neither filed personal tax returns or paid income tax to the IRS from 2014 to 2016.
In addition to his five years in federal prison, Jafari will also have to pay a $300 special assessment and close to $1 million in restitution for evading at least $1.5 million in taxes, according to officials.
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