ATLANTA — A local contractor pleaded guilty in his City of Atlanta bribery case, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday, tying up one of the last loose ends in the city government bribery scandal that resulted in several ex-city officials going to prison.
Alpharetta businessman Lohrasb "Jeff" Jafari, 72, had been accused by the federal government of paying bribes to Atlanta city officials in order to win contracts for years during the Kasim Reed administration.
The DOJ said he admitted to both paying bribes to Adam Smith, the city's former chief procurement officer, and Jo Ann Macrina, the former commissioner of the Department of Watershed Management, and tax evasion in his case.
The contracts, the DOJ said, were worth millions of dollars.
"Jafari gave Smith and Macrina cash and other items of value to obtain business with the City of Atlanta," a release said. "In exchange for those payments, Smith and Macrina conspired with Jafari to ensure that PRAD Group received city business worth millions of dollars, including by agreeing to replace two evaluators on the selection team for the city’s architectural and engineering contract and to re-score an evaluation so that Jafari’s company would be awarded a contract."
The DOJ described how Jafari would meet with Smith at restaurants and pay him $1,000 in cash in the bathroom after most of the meetings. The DOJ said that in all, Jafari paid Smith more than $40,000 in cash from 2014-2017.
The businessman also gave Macrina a job and gifts that included a luxury trip to Dubai and landscaping work. The DOJ said he gave her $30,000 across four separate payments in 2016, as well.
Jafari pleaded guilty to three charges - conspiratorial bribery, substantive bribery and tax evasion. The DOJ said he faces a maximum of 20 years for the three combined charges.
For their part in the bribery scheme, Smith was sentenced to more than two years in prison in 2018 and Macrina was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.
In other City Hall scandal cases, Atlanta's former city Director of Human Services, Mitzi Bickers, was convicted last year of money laundering, conspiracy to commit bribery and wire fraud, and was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison.
The director of the city Office of Contract Compliance, Larry Scott, pleaded guilty in 2019 and Reed's Deputy Chief of Staff Katrina Taylor-Parks also previously pleaded guilty to taking bribes and was given a federal prison sentence.
Reed's former press secretary Jenna Garland was convicted in a separate case in 2019 on misdemeanor counts of violating the Georgia Open Records Act.
A trial has yet to begin in the case of former city Chief Financial Officer Jim Beard.