WASHINGTON: Pakistan has deported a Pakistani-American who would now serve a 15-year prison sentence for a kickback scheme while working for a local government in Ohio, the US media reported on Thursday.
Officials at the Pakistan Embassy, Washington, confirmed that Amer Ahmad was extradited to the United States on Wednesday. US federal prosecutors told reporters that a court in Ohio would review his case on Friday.
Ahmad, 40, is a former Ohio deputy treasurer. He worked for two Democratic treasurers in Ohio, then for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who served as a White House chief of staff under President Barack Obama from Jan 2009 to Oct 2010.
In 2013, he pleaded guilty to bribery and conspiracy charges but fled to Pakistan to avoid punishment. He was arrested in Pakistan in April last year for holding a forged Mexican passport, a fraudulent Pakistani birth certificate, a false Pakistani visa and $175,000, authorities said.
He remained jailed there on immigration violations and was sentenced on Dec 1 in absentia in the US case. Besides the prison term, he was ordered to forfeit $3.2 million made from the crimes.
Three co-defendants also have pleaded guilty and have been sentenced.
Court documents show that between 2009 and January 2011, Ahmad, Mohammed Noure Alo, another financial adviser Douglas E. Hampton and Chicago mortgage broker Joseph Chiavaroli conspired to use Ahmad’s position at the state treasurer’s office to secure lucrative state business.
Ahmad and Chiavaroli hid payments from Hampton using the accounts of a landscaping business in which the two had ownership interests, and Hampton also funnelled money through Alo.
Prosecutors say Hampton paid over $500,000 in bribes to receive about $3.2 million in commissions for securities trading on behalf of the Ohio treasurer’s office.
Hampton was sentenced last year to 45 months in prison. Alo was given a 48-month prison term and Chiavaroli was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2015
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