Does the FBI read Front Page Magazine?
We were on this story last year.
There have been 118,352 cases of human waste on the streets of San Francisco since 2011. That’s also when Mohammed Nuru took over as the head of the city’s Department of Public Works.
The Nigerian immigrant who calls himself Mr. Clean has been promising to clean up San Francisco back to the Willie Brown days. Brown, the notoriously corrupt city boss, had picked Nuru as his point man, after some assistance on political campaigns, appointing him DPW deputy director in 2000.
Nuru had gotten his start with SLUG, a social justice community gardening organization… Mr. Clean was a protégé of Mayor Brown and complaints quickly rose from DPW employees about corruption, discrimination and intimidation. DPW employees complained that he filled DPW positions with his own political allies from SLUG, diverted street cleaning funds to SLUG, and used public employees to improve areas near his home. DPW people who complained about Mohammed were demoted or transferred. If you crossed Mr. Clean, the word was that he would ‘clean you out’.
Nuru had been a Brown campaign volunteer before he even became a citizen. And had allegedly forced SLUG employees to campaign for the corrupt San Fran boss, telling them that their jobs depended on it.
Mohammed Nuru landed a top job at the DPW where he promised to “get rid of those white managers.”
By 2004, four years later, Mohammed Nuru had been banned from any further dealings with his old SLUG buddies after the social justice group was accused of pressuring workers to campaign and vote for Gavin Newsom in the city’s mayoral election. (Newsom has since become governor of California.)
SLUG employees were once again being told that they would lose their jobs if Newsom didn’t win.
The event at which SLUG employees, many of them homeless or ex-cons, were forced to cast absentee ballots had been sponsored by Attorney General Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris’ campaign manager admitted to being in contact with Mohammed Nuru during the election and SLUG workers filled up Harris events.
Fast forward to today, and Mohammed Nuru, utterly incompetent, has left San Francisco a filthy mess. And now he was finally busted.
Federal authorities charged San Francisco Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru and high-profile restaurateur Nick Bovis with fraud Tuesday following a public corruption probe. The schemes involved an envelope of cash, fraudulent city contracts, improper gifts from a Chinese developer and a $2,000 bottle of wine, according to authorities.
FBI agents on Monday arrested Nuru, 57, and Bovis, 56, at their Bay Area homes before unsealing a federal complaint Tuesday for one charge of wire fraud. Nuru is separately charged with lying to the FBI after initially being arrested on Jan. 21 and being told to keep quiet about the investigation.
“The complaint alleges corruption pouring into San Francisco from around the world,” said David Anderson, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, at a news conference Tuesday.
Anderson accused Nuru of “corruption, bribery kickbacks and side deals by one of San Francisco’s highest-ranking public employees.”
Shocking. Who could have possibly seen this coming after nearly two decades of complaints about Nuru?
Critics said that while he was a city official he pushed to extend SLUG’s $1 million-per-year city grant for street-cleaning, and he allowed the nonprofit to charge the city thousands for unusual expenses: $75,000 for a double-wide trailer, $25,000 for overalls and baseball caps, $1,400 in consulting fees to a member of the SLUG board.
Once, Nuru allegedly ordered a DPW crew – at a cost to the public of $40,000 – to clean up a debris-strewn vacant lot near his home in Bayview- Hunters Point. Recently he was involved in requesting $70,000 in city funds to landscape another vacant lot in his neighborhood, city records show
There are only two words that you need to understand this mess. Willie Brown.
The real question is will other Brown proteges who got on board with Nuru and benefited from his abuses, most notably, Governor Newsom and Senator Kamala Harris face any real questions?
Will the national media notice?
Don’t bet on it.
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