15 charged in fresh federal crackdown on Chicago payoffs

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Federal prosecutors unveiled payoff charges against 15 building inspectors and others Thursday, saying Chicago's real estate development industry is in the grip of widespread, systematic corruption. It was the second batch of charges in a year aimed at what prosecutors describe as a system under which developers use payoffs ranging from envelopes of cash to Chicago Bulls sky box seats to get city officials to rubber stamp projects rather than waiting out time-consuming inspections. U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said it was apparent that last year's charges failed to sink in with either inspectors or developers. "Basically, here we go again," he said in unveiling the new charges. "These charges show that last year's arrests didn't change the system enough," Fitzgerald said. "It didn't stop the bribery. It just changed how the bribery was done. They got sneakier." Federal investigators got sneakier, too, revealing Thursday that a bribe-carrying "bagman" supposedly working within the corrupt system was actually a cooperating witness, secretly gathering evidence against 30 individuals at meetings and in recorded telephone calls. Mayor Richard Daley said the charges were "regrettable" and "appalling." "People who take money from the ... private sector, public sector, are going to get caught," he said, adding only a few building department personnel were involved in the alleged wrongdoing. Chicago's city government has long been beset by widespread corruption. Major corruption cases in recent years have focused on illegal patronage hiring and millions of dollars paid to trucking companies that did little or no work and in some cases had close ties to organized crime. Eight separate cases were announced Thursday in which 15 individuals were charged, seven of them city employees. Money changed hands to get inspectors to approve illegal basements, plumbing code violations, zoning approval, occupancy permits and other items that saved money for builders and developers, authorities said. One inspector allegedly got a new deck put on his home in exchange for hurrying through approval of a permit.