The Watchdogs
Investigations of government, politicians, education, business and issues affecting taxpayers and consumers.
“They ran an undercover investigation on Mr. Burke for 30 months — with the star witness being Danny Solis — and they didn’t have the decency to bring him to you,” said attorney Joseph Duffy.
Eligible residents have January deadlines to file a claim or opt out of the court settlement with the owner of the McKinley Park plant.
Rommell Kellogg was convicted of collecting payments from Arnie’s Idle Hour in Harvey in exchange for the city not closing the club, where prostitution flourished.
Burke’s defense team has promised to summon former Ald. Danny Solis to the witness stand — finally giving Burke the chance to confront the man who famously turned on him while wearing an FBI wire.
Prosecutors in Burke’s corruption trial say the call in 2017 demonstrated the former alderman’s “modus operandi.”
Authorities say Oscar Manuel Gastelum Iribe, as head of the Beltran Leyva Organization, conspired to import tons of heroin and cocaine.
City Hall bureaucracy took center stage in former Ald. Ed Burke’s corruption trial Thursday as one of the finer disputed points in the case came to a head.
In the five months since July, the city has seen the sharpest spike in robberies in 20 years, driven by crimes committed with a weapon.
Nearly 4,900 robberies happened between July 1 and Nov. 26, a more than 55% increase compared to the previous five months. That’s the largest percentage increase in robberies between consecutive five-month periods since at least 2001.
Restaurant employee is pressed why he didn’t initially tell FBI agents about the former alderperson’s apparent interest in getting private business from Burger King owners.
The payouts from the 300 cases have included $140 million that went to lawyers for the city and $537 million paid to plaintiffs.
“We were going to talk about the real estate tax representation, and you were going to have somebody get in touch with me so we can expedite your permits,” Burke was recorded saying during a call with an executive.
An executive for Shoukat Dhanani, which owned hundred of Burger King locations, said the Klafter & Burke firm “seemed very disorganized.”
Construction was halted Sunday pending an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency review of a nearly 800-page city consultant’s study that was released Friday night.
Burke tried, but failed, to leverage his political clout to strong-arm business for his tax appeals firm out of the New York business that redeveloped the Old Post Office.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall denied a request for mistrial over a remark about the ‘Chicago way of doing business’ being ‘very corrupt.’ That allowed prosecutors to proceed with recordings of Burke and witness testimony.
Rev. Richard McGrath’s name belongs on lists of abusers kept by all Catholic dioceses where he worked, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said.
When Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur explained that she did not expect Amtrak executive Ray Lang to make the comment, U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall quickly asked, ‘What were you expecting him to say?’
Nearly a dozen former and current Peoples Gas workers say in the federal lawsuit that the company racially discriminated against Black employees in the Chicago area.
Special Agent Ryan McDonald’s testimony came nearly five years to the day after the FBI raided former Chicago Ald. Edward M. Burke’s offices Nov. 29, 2018.
Feds say giving council members “a local veto over proposals to build affordable housing” has meant it’s “rarely, if ever, constructed in the majority-white wards that have the least affordable housing.”
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