Controversy over campaign donations from longtime city contractor the PRAD Group, which had its Sandy Springs’ office raided last month by FBI agents, has reached into the Atlanta City Council race.
Michael Julian Bond’s re-election campaign for the city-wide Post 1 seat he has held since 2010 received $12,800 from the PRAD engineering firm, a related company and individuals associated with it.
On Tuesday, Bond told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he would return the campaign contributions, about an hour after challenger Courtney English said Bond should do so.
Bond's promise to return the money came one day after mayoral candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms vowed to return $25,700 in contributions from PRAD and related entities.
“I’ll return anything that is questionable,” Bond said Tuesday. “Anything and everything. I don’t need my opponent to tell me that.”
Those contributions include $2,600 from a joint venture company that includes the PRAD Group; $2,600 donations from PRAD executive vice president Lohrasb Jeff Jafari and his wife Nancy; and two $2,500 donations from the family of George Reynolds, who is president of the PRAD Group.
PRAD has been paid at least $100 million by the city since 2009, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of the company’s city contracts and purchase orders.
Bond said he would “certainly” return all donations from Jafari and PRAD; he said he would have to “look into” the contributions from Reynolds.
English said returning all contributions is appropriate because “the city exists under a cloud of corruption.”
PRAD-related contributions are “the largest single contributor to the councilman’s campaign,” English said. “As long as he holds on to that cash, he is contributing to that cloud.”
Bond admitted to the violations, said he was “embarrassed” by them and said many happened because of health problems that have significantly affected his eyesight for a decade and made it difficult for him to file accurate reports.
The councilman in 2015 also had to pay $15,000 to settle more than a dozen violations of the city’s ethics code on spending and accepting gifts.
PRAD's office was raided by FBI agents last month, just days before the city's former purchasing chief, Adam Smith, pleaded guilty to accepting $30,000 in bribes in exchange for giving inside information to an unnamed contractor.
In addition, two construction contractors — Elvin "E.R." Mitchell Jr. and Charles P. Richards Jr. — pleaded guilty earlier this year to paying bribes in exchange for city contracts. Smith, Mitchell and Richards have all agreed to cooperate with the investigation as part of the guilty pleas.
It’s unclear if or how PRAD is connected to the City Hall investigation, which is ongoing and shows no end in sight. But on Tuesday, the PRAD group sent out a press release saying that Jafari, 67, was retiring from the company to spend more time with his family “here and overseas.”
