A contractor who has admitted paying $1 million in bribes to win city of Atlanta contracts paid a former member of Mayor Kasim Reed's administration more than $500,000 in 2014 and 2015, during the time frame of the alleged scheme, court documents filed in Fulton County allege.
The timing of the alleged payments by Elvin "E.R." Mitchell Jr. to companies tied to the Rev. Mitzi Bickers falls after Bickers left her job at City Hall in 2013. Esther Panitch, an attorney who represents Mitchell's wife, Marjorie Mitchell, in their divorce case, based the assertion on bank records for E.R. Mitchell's companies obtained via subpoenas.
Bickers has not been charged with a crime, but she has drawn the attention of federal investigators. The feds have subpoenaed records pertaining to Bickers from both the city of Atlanta and from Clayton County where she works as a chaplain for Sheriff Victor Hill.
Mitchell pleaded guilty in January to conspiring to pay more than $1 million in bribes from 2010 to 2015 to an unnamed person under the belief that some of the funds would be paid to one or more city officials with influence over the contracting process. That intermediary has not been identified by federal prosecutors.
Bob Page, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta, declined to comment on the alleged payments from Mitchell to Bickers outlined in the divorce case.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported in May about emails sent between Bickers and her legal team, in which her lawyers needed her personal and business financial records, as well as financial records for her church. The emails showed federal prosecutors were attempting to build a case against her last winter, about the time the feds were negotiating guilty pleas from Mitchell and a second contractor.
Carl Lietz, an attorney for Bickers, did not respond to voice and email messages seeking comment. Likewise, Mitchell’s criminal defense attorney, Craig Gillen, did not respond to messages from the AJC.
Reed’s office reiterated past statements that the city is fully cooperating with federal authorities, and said “those involved in any wrongdoing should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
‘Not legitimate expenses’
Mitchell and Charles P. Richards Jr. have each pleaded guilty in the cash-for-contracts scheme and the men have agreed to cooperate in the federal probe. They await sentencing scheduled in October.
Bickers previously was a defendant in the Mitchell divorce case, accused of helping the contractor hide money from his wife. Bickers is no longer a defendant in the family matter.
In a letter dated June 2 to Odis Williams, the divorce lawyer for E.R. Mitchell, Panitch stated the contractor wrote checks in 2014 and 2015 to companies controlled by Bickers from a SunTrust account for one of his companies, Cascade Building Systems, “totaling over $500,000.”
The AJC and Channel 2 Action News previously uncovered Cascade was paid more than $7.3 million by the city for emergency snow removal during winter storms in 2011 and 2014. The AJC and Channel 2 analysis found the emergency work closely aligned with the dates of bribe payments and acts of money laundering outlined in Mitchell's guilty plea.
The charges against Mitchell, however, did not list any bribe payments or acts of money laundering in 2015.
In his guilty plea, Mitchell has admitted to withdrawing $150,000 in cash for a bribe on Feb. 19, 2014, and wiring $110,000 in cash on April 1, 2014. Panitch said some of the payments to Bickers’ companies were made by wire transfer.
Bickers once worked as an executive for one of E.R. Mitchell’s construction companies, but the AJC has found no records that Bickers was employed by any of Mitchell’s companies in 2014 or 2015.
“Those checks were not legitimate expenses of Cascade,” Panitch wrote to divorce attorney Williams, accusing the contractor of misappropriating funds that belong among the assets in the couple’s marital estate.
An earlier scheme?
Panitch's letter to E.R. Mitchell's attorney is included in a motion to compel discovery in the contentious divorce case.
Marjorie Mitchell and her attorney have sought to untangle E.R. Mitchell’s complicated web of businesses in search of assets for the marital estate.
The letter delivers other bombshell allegations against the contractor, including ones that might be used to impugn E.R. Mitchell’s character should he testify against others in future criminal cases.
Among the exhibits in the motion is a copy of a preliminary charging document that Mitchell and Gillen, the contractor’s criminal defense attorney, were negotiating with prosecutors at some point in 2016.
The draft states that the bribery scheme started in 2007, or three years before what Mitchell admitted to in U.S. District Court in January.
The unsigned draft charging document traces similar themes: that Mitchell conspired to pay more than $1 million in bribes to an unnamed intermediary with connections at City Hall. But some of the dates and dollar amounts differ from the charges made public after Mitchell was arraigned in January.
Though the draft charging document asserts the scheme started in 2007, it does not list any specific bribes paid before 2011. The draft does, however, document $320,000 in bribe payments or money-laundering withdraws not mentioned in the complaint to which Mitchell pleaded guilty.
The AJC previously reported that Panitch uncovered the draft of a separate non-prosecution agreement from 2006 for Mitchell to become a federal informant. In that case, Mitchell was negotiating a deal to avoid prosecution for defrauding Fulton County Schools in exchange for becoming an undercover witness in other cases.
It’s unclear if Mitchell ever signed that agreement, but he was never charged in the case. Federal authorities have not confirmed whether he acted as an informant.
In 2006, Mitchell reached a $1.7 million settlement with Fulton County Schools over alleged overbilling for construction projects at two county schools, according to school system records. Mitchell agreed to a ban from ever working with the school system.
Mitchell dismisses wife’s claims
The draft non-prosecution agreement also stipulated that Mitchell could not take on any other government contracts under his main businesses for three years, Panitch has said. And that, she has alleged, is when Mitchell started companies under the names of relatives and his wife.
In her June 2 letter to Williams, Panitch also contends E.R. Mitchell concocted the bribery scheme and set up Richards to save his own skin from other unmentioned “misdeeds.”
An attorney for Richards had no comment.
Panitch's letter also alleges Mitchell helped stage an act of vandalism at his home after Mitchell started working with the feds.
Williams, the divorce lawyer for Mitchell, called the allegations in Panitch’s letter “bizarre,” and objected to her broadening the divorce case.
“The guy copped a plea,” Williams said. “He did a bad thing, he is working with the feds and he’s going to go to jail….I’ve gone through [the letter] with my client and he has no idea what [Panitch is] talking about.”
Jan. 17: The U.S. Attorney's Office charges contractor Elvin "E.R." Mitchell Jr. with a single count of conspiracy to commit bribery and launder money in a pay-to-play corruption scheme at Atlanta City Hall.
Jan. 25: Mitchell pleads guilty in federal court. As part of the plea, Mitchell agrees to cooperate with the ongoing investigation.
Feb. 7: A Fulton County grand jury indicts Shandarrick Barnes on felony counts of terroristic threats and criminal damage to property for allegedly throwing a brick through Mitchell's home window in 2015 in an attempt to intimidate him into silence.
Feb. 8: Contractor Charles P. Richards Jr. is charged with conspiracy to commit bribery.
Feb. 9: City of Atlanta releases 1.4 million documents it had turned over to federal prosecutors in the bribery investigation. Among those documents is an August subpoena federal prosecutors served to the city looking for all emails and work product related to Rev. Mitzi Bickers during her three years with the city.
Feb. 16: Richards pleads guilty in federal court and agrees to cooperate with the ongoing investigation.
Feb. 17: A federal subpoena demands that Atlanta turn over information related to purchasing chief Adam Smith, and includes conflict-of-interest disclosures by Smith for all city contracts of $1 million or more since 2014.
Feb. 21: Smith is fired just before federal agents search his office and seize his work computer and phone.
Feb. 27: The U.S. Attorney's Office issues a subpoena seeking all of Bickers' emails and work product for the Clayton County Sheriff's Office, where she works as a chaplain.
March 29: City of Atlanta releases an additional 240,000 pages of documents turned over to the U.S. Attorney's Office as part of the federal investigation.
June 22: State charges dropped against Barnes when the U.S. Attorney's Office won't turn over evidence against Barnes to local prosecutors.
June 28: Sentencing for Mitchell and Richards is moved to October.
