Sebastian “Ben” Lorigo, the trusted lieutenant of D.C.’s embattled chief financial officer, announced his retirement Tuesday, less than a month after a massive corruption scandal exposed gaping holes in the city’s fiscal system.
Lorigo said in a statement sent Tuesday that he’d been planning his retirement “for quite some time.”
But he was scalded by widening investigations of the tax office, where two employees allegedly bilked the public out of tens of millions of dollars. Lorigo, a former Internal Revenue Service executive who started his D.C. career in the tax office, rose quickly through the bureaucracy and became one of Gandhi’s reliable troubleshooters.
When the scandal broke, Gandhi called on Lorigo to clean up the mess. But, as the top auditor of the finance office during the period it was scammed, he was asked repeatedly how he had missed the tens of millions of dollars hemorrhaging out of the public’s coffers.
His presentation to the D.C. Council on the day the two employees were arrested left some public officials cold. Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3, said she thought Lorigo brushed aside concerns that the finance officehad to rely on a tip from a Maryland bank teller, and not city controls, to unravel the alleged scheme. Within days of the arrests, Yvette Alexander, D-Ward 7 and a protege of council Chairman Vincent Gray, demanded Lorigo’s firing.
Gandhi demanded resignations from dozens of finance office employees on the day the scandal broke, but the hasty sackings only served to ratchet up public complaints the ax should fall on finance office leadership. E-mails continue to flood into the council demanding Gandhi be forced to follow his aides out the door.
Lorigo’s retirement takes affect Jan. 4. Sources told The Examiner that one of the leading candidates to replace Lorigo is Richard “Dick” Sella, a former computer chief in the finance office.
