U.S. Charges a Leading Chicago Political Figure With Fraud and Bribery

CHICAGO, May 10 - A powerful former alderman who in the 1980s led a bitter rebellion of white politicians against the city's first black mayor was indicted Thursday on federal charges of fraud and bribery.

Skip to next paragraph Chicago Sun-Times

Edward R. Vrdolyak was indicted in a real estate kickback case.

The defendant, Edward R. Vrdolyak, 69, has been out of office for 20 years but continues to be a prominent figure here. The indictment accuses him of conspiring with a businessman, Stuart Levine, to obtain a .5 million kickback in a real estate deal in the city's affluent Gold Coast neighborhood. He is charged with one count of mail fraud, two counts of wire fraud and one count of bribery.

His lawyer, Michael D. Monico, said Mr. Vrdolyak planned to plead not guilty.

"The allegations in the indictment are simply not true," Mr. Monico said, adding that Mr. Vrdolyak would "contest the charges with every fiber in his body."

Prosecutors maintain that from 2002 to 2006, Mr. Vrdolyak plotted with Mr. Levine, who was then a trustee of a suburban medical school, to arrange for the school's sale of a building to a developer. In exchange, the two men planned to receive from the developer .5 million, which they intended to split.

The indictment says that Mr. Vrdolyak solicited the buyer for the building and that Mr. Levine used his influence on the medical school's board to exclude negotiations with other prospective buyers. A deal at a price of million was reached in 2004, and under an agreement between Mr. Vrdolyak and the developer, the 10 percent fee was to be paid at a future date, the government says.

The fee was never paid, because of an "incomplete nature of the sale transaction and the federal investigation," the United States attorney's office said in a statement.

The seller in the deal was the Finch University of Health Sciences/Chicago Medical School, now named Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. The developer was Smithfield Properties Development. Neither is accused of any wrongdoing.

"This case exposes the behind-the-scenes manipulation that the defendant and Levine allegedly engaged in to reap financial windfalls," Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney here, said in announcing the indictment.

Mr. Levine, 61, pleaded guilty last year on charges of mail fraud and money laundering for seeking kickbacks from investment firms looking to do business with state pension funds. While awaiting sentencing, he is cooperating with federal authorities in a public corruption inquiry that led to Thursday's indictment.

Nicknamed Fast Eddie, Mr. Vrdolyak is a sophisticated machine politician of the old guard who served on the City Council from 1971 to 1987, ran twice for mayor (losing both times) and was chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party.

He is best known for fighting bitterly in the mid-1980s with Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington, who was elected in 1983 and re-elected four years later. During Mr. Washington's first term, Mr. Vrdolyak, then an alderman from the Southeast Side, led a faction of 29 white aldermen in opposing the reform agenda of Mr. Washington and his 21 allies on the City Council.

Known locally as the Council Wars, the fight went on for years, turning City Hall into a tumultuous political battleground and coarsening racial politics here.

In the 1987 mayoral election, Mr. Vrdolyak ran against Mr. Washington as a third-party candidate. Mr. Washington won, but died soon afterward. Two years later, in a special election, Mr. Vrdolyak switched parties and ran unsuccessfully as the Republican candidate against Richard M. Daley, a Democrat. Mr. Daley won, and has been mayor ever since.

More Topics:
Chicago Lawyers
This site contains Chicago links to attorney Lawyers in Chicago. ... Chicago Lawyers. Select a Practice Area at Left to Proceed. Click Here To. Add Your Firm's ...