Yep. /https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/2016/11/10/TX2016-county-results.png)
Posted on 02/06/2018 6:55:27 AM PST by Elderberry
A local official in Hidalgo, Texas, cajoled company executives to hire a firm owned by his family in exchange for a cut of lucrative construction contracts, an investigation from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found. Claims against that official and his family were made last year in a lawsuit by the county. The kickback scheme started during a discussion at a steakhouse near the US-Mexico border in Texas. The kickback scheme was allegedly hashed out over weeknight drinks at a steakhouse in a border county in south Texas.
Amid surf and turf and expensive scotch, a Hidalgo County official said he would meet with contractors in the clubby confines of the restaurant in a strip mall in McAllen.
There, Godfrey Garza Jr., director of the county’s drainage district, cajoled company executives to hire a firm owned by his family in exchange for a cut of lucrative construction contracts, according to new documents filed in state district court in Hidalgo County.
The target of the plan: a $232 million project funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the county to build a border fence and rehabilitate aging dirt levees along the Rio Grande.
The previously unreported details of Garza’s alleged scheme emerged last week in an ongoing lawsuit in which the county has sued companies owned by Garza, his wife and their two sons for fraud during the construction of the combined levee-fence. The new filings also implicate one of Texas’ most powerful engineering firms, Dannenbaum Engineering, as a participant in the scheme.
“[T]he deeper we look into this case the more troubling facts we discover,” said Michael J. Blanchard, the county’s lawyer. “As evidence develops, it is increasingly clear that the wrongdoing in this case rose beyond the level of simple fraud.”
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
What wall?
Maybe this is why that judge was REALLY arrested.
“What wall?”
The one they’ve been preparing to build.
Isn’t Hidalgo solidly Democrat?
Yep.
more details needed.....
like party affiliation
“Isn’t Hidalgo solidly Democrat?”
ALL the Texas Counties that front the Rio Grande River are solid RAT. But most Texans here don’t see that as a problem.
Collusion, scamming and evil-doing in small town Texas?
Call the FBI!
They can show these rubes how to do it without getting caught.
If their is to be any corrupt activitiex it can only be amoung dims.
In which case it’s not illegal.
Garza described the meetings at the steakhouse where the plan was hammered out but says he’s not guilty. I don’t get it.
And a good majority of them are ILLEGALS.
Godfrey Garza Political Campaign Contributions 2012 Election Cycle
https://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/godfrey-garza.asp?cycle=12
Had nothing to do with Trump, this was alll a decade ago. The BI writer needs to be shot and then run through a chipper.
Seriously?!
I had some experience with a Garza who ran a surveying firm in South Texas in the mid ‘80s. Had to wash my hands after every meeting with him he was so sleazy. Wasn’t this guy, but could have been related. His wife ran a Mexican restaurant.
Two authors?
Pussies.
All the really good articles have at least three writers...
Who is investigating bribes and kickbacks for Boston’s ‘Big Dig’, or California’s rail to nowhere?
Add your list of suspect projects:
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Maybe they need an FBI investigation into drug smuggling, human trafficking, and graft in job bidding.
Clean the democrat house
Doesn’t have anything to do with today, except for historic missing billions in Iraq and Afghanistan and the dems will use this lawsuit to delay the wall for as long as possible.
from the ending:
Other representatives have expressed concern about federal spending on the levee-wall project. U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, a longtime member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said she was “surprised and appalled” to learn about the potential misspending of taxpayer dollars on the project.
She said committee members asked the department at the time for reports on how exactly money was being spent on the border fence but it never provided anything to them. That needs to happen before Congress even considers funding more of a border barrier, she said.
“The president indicated he has contractors standing by, ready to spend money, and we don’t even have an accounting of how money was spent before or how much was spent or whether the money was spent efficiently,” she said. “And, frankly, I think that that should be a nonstarter for any wall funding now.”
The wall will go up primarily in Te dad. It’s all about Texas. Texans make illegal immigration work for them. They will get in the way. While we all say oh Texans are eonderful They’re going to be helpful and strong.
No. This kind of crap is going to happen
W is a Texan. He was the governor of Texas. What did he do to stop illegal immigration?
Abbott seems very good and he has support. A lot of Texans not happy with all this.
But these stories should not shock people
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