Friday, September 24, 2004
Two testify they were repaid for making out blank checks from N/P agency getting state grants;
Monies went to campaign coffers of grant facilitator By Vanessa Hua, Christian Berthelsen, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writers
Sacramento -- Two witnesses told federal prosecutors that they provided signed blank checks to people who later gave them to Kevin Shelley's 2002 secretary of state campaign, in return for reimbursement from a taxpayer- funded San Francisco nonprofit organization, according to sources familiar with the case.
At the time of the donations, neither Steve Chen nor Joseph Chen, the two witnesses who testified before a federal grand jury under grants of immunity, knew who Shelley was, according to a lawyer for one witness and another source familiar with the statements given to the government.
The grand jury is investigating whether Julie Lee -- founder of the San Francisco Neighbors Resource Center -- steered $125,000 from a state grant into Shelley's campaign account. The grant, which Shelley helped secure while he was in the state Assembly, was supposed to pay for construction of a community center in the Sunset District, but it has not been built.
Sources said Steve Chen and Joseph Chen, who are not related, testified that they did not perform any services for the center, despite receiving payments for "development fees" and "project management" from the nonprofit group.
Chris Moscone, a lawyer for Joseph Chen, said in an interview after his client 's testimony that Lee recently asked Chen to sign a false invoice purporting to show he did work on the center.
Moscone said the request was made after questions were being raised about how the center spent the state grant funds. He said his client refused to sign the document.
Hard to believe this idiot Brown got back into office. Guess sap-happy Cali
libs believe anything a pol tells them. Course, we have to factor in massive voter
fraud, as well as Jerky, er, I mean, Jerry,'s incipient Alzheimer's.
BACKSTORY The Cali govt's "campaign money machine scam" to buy
votes with tax dollars was engineered in the 1970s; the pols calculatingly
legalized tax-paid public-employee unions ability to organize and bargain.
Then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed the campaign money-machine bill in 1978.
"Wasn't my fault," 2010 Candidate Brown told cheering Democrats.