Feds charge former SF building engineers with bribery in widening scandal

San Francisco can add two former construction building engineers to its widening corruption scandal.

Federal prosecutors indicted Cyril Yu and Rudy Pada, former engineers with the Department of Building Inspection, for taking bribes in exchange for expedited building permits, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Pada, 68, of Millbrae, was charged with accepting bribes that included money, meals and more from 2003 until he retired in 2017, prosecutors said.

Yu, 41, of San Francisco, was charged with taking bribes that included cash, meals, drinks and other benefits from January 2018 and continued to do so until February 2021 in return for expediting and approving permits for building and construction plans, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. 

His name previously surfaced in connection with a yearslong federal corruption probe.

Pada and Yu were each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud. If convicted, they could serve up to 20 years in prison, with fines of up to $250,000. 

Yu and Pada didn’t answer calls from the Chronicle. The names of their attorneys were not known.

The federal indictments are the latest in a San Francisco corruption scandal that began in early 2020 with the arrest of former Public Works chief Mohammed Nuru, who was later sentenced to seven years in prison on corruption charges.

The probe has led to indictments, guilty pleas and convictions of more than a dozen city officials, contractors and local business executives, including Harlan Kelly, former general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. 

In July, former building inspector Bernard Curran was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Structural engineer Rodrigo Santos received a 30-month sentence. A former Recology executive was sentenced to six months of home confinement, according to the Chronicle.

Prosecutors also charged Chinese billionaire Zhang Li with bribing Nuru. Li agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement; his company, Z&L Properties, has agreed to pay a $1 million fine.

Pada is alleged to have received an interest-free $85,000 loan from a “planning and design firm executive” in December 2013, which the two men allegedly hid by having the funds provided by the executive’s relative, according to the indictment.

Property records reviewed by the Chronicle indicate the man who provided the loan was Freydoon Ghassemzadeh. His family business, SIA Consulting, is a developer based in San Francisco.

In 2013, Pada signed a deed of trust of the Sunset District home he then occupied in return for an $85,000 loan to Ghassemzadeh, according to documents at the San Francisco Assessor-Recorder’s Office. 

Read more

San Francisco

Corruption case pushes SF developer Yosef Tahbazof to exit city post

San Francisco

Chinese developer admits to bribing SF public works boss

San Francisco

Judge sentences SF building inspector to one year in prison

After the Chronicle reported on another loan between Ghassemzadeh and Curran, Ghassemzadeh’s son, Bahman Ghassemzadeh, stepped down from the Building Inspection Commission’s Board of Examiners. Bahman Ghassemzadeh declined to comment and said his father wouldn’t comment either.

In August, Yosef Tahbazof, a San Francisco developer and attorney, resigned from the city’s Assessment Appeals Board after he was linked to the public corruption case.

The co-founder of Tahbazof Law Firm and principal of locally based Atlas Property Group left the board after allegations he helped prepare a loan at the center of a corruption case against Curran. Freydoon Ghassemzadeh is the uncle of Yosef Tahbazof, whose father Sia Tahbazof is a developer who may be linked to the case, according to the San Francisco Standard.

— Dana Bartholomew