A former executive for a longtime city of Atlanta vendor pleaded guilty Wednesday to paying bribes in exchange for millions of dollars in city contracts and to paying bribes to an official in a neighboring county in an attempt to get business there.
In addition to admitting to paying bribes to Atlanta and DeKalb County officials, Lohrasb “Jeff” Jafari, 72, also pleaded guilty to failing to pay more than $1.5 million in taxes, federal prosecutors said. He is the latest in a string of people, including numerous former Atlanta city officials, to plead guilty or be convicted by a jury as part of a federal investigation into corruption during former Mayor Kasim Reed’s administration. Reed himself was never charged with wrongdoing.
“Contractors and the public deserve a fair and impartial government procurement process,” U.S. Attorney Ryan Buchanan said in a news release. “For years, Jeff Jafari corrupted, and attempted to corrupt, those processes in the City of Atlanta and DeKalb County by paying tens of thousands of dollars in bribe payments to several high-ranking government officials. Not surprisingly, after illegally obtaining city contracts he never paid a dime of personal income tax on millions of dollars he earned.”
Jafari was the executive vice president of PRAD Group, which provided architectural, design and engineering services for Atlanta and DeKalb County, prosecutors said.
Jafari gave cash and other items to Adam Smith, who served as Atlanta’s chief procurement officer from January 2003 to February 2017, and to Jo Ann Macrina, who was commissioner of the city Department of Watershed Management from April 2011 to May 2016, prosecutors said. In exchange, they ensured that PRAD Group obtained lucrative city contracts.
