The former head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has pleaded guilty to corruption for awarding a $30 million no-bid contract to a company he planned to join upon retirement.
David Wright, 62, pleaded guilty to one count of bribery, federal prosecutors announced Monday. The former general manager of the largest municipal utility provider in the nation is expected to appear in court Friday, and he faces up to 10 years behind bars.
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Mayor Eric Garcetti had Wright resign in 2019 when the FBI raided LADWP offices months before he was going to retire.
Wright conspired with lawyer Paul Paradis, who the city hired to help resolve a billing scandal in which many ratepayers were overcharged for their water and electricity, to create a company with which he then had the LADWP sign a three-year contract worth millions in 2017. Wright and Paradis did not disclose their involvement to the LADWP board.
Paradis promised that Wright would take over the company, named Aventador after the Lamborghini, as CEO with an annual salary of $1 million and a “signing bonus” of $600,000 to $1.2 million, as well as a luxury company car.
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“Wright admitted in his plea agreement that he deprived LADWP and its ratepayers of their right to his honest services and violated the fiduciary duty that he, as general manager, owed to LADWP and its ratepayers,” the Department of Justice in Los Angeles said.
Paradis accepted a plea deal in a different corruption case in which he admitted to accepting a “kick back” of over $2 million for arranging a lawyer from his own firm to represent the ratepayers in the billing lawsuit while he represented the city.
