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Former Chicago Comptroller Extradited From Pakistan To Serve Bribery Sentence
Posted On Aug 28 2015
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“Mr. Ahmad, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again”, Watson said in greeting when he began the 10-minute hearing.
Shackled and thin, Amer Ahmad (ah-MEER’ ah-MAHD’) on Friday expressed “sincere remorse and contrition for this entire awful chapter” in his life.
“What I did was wrong”.
A former Ohio deputy treasurer who tried to sneak into Pakistan after pleading guilty to bribery and money laundering charges has been extradited back to the United States, the Justice Department announced Wednesday night.
Amer Ahmad, 40, pleaded guilty in December 2013 to federal program bribery and conspiracy to commit federal program bribery, honest services wire fraud and money laundering.
In December 2014, Watson sentenced Ahmad in absentia for operating a multimillion-dollar kickback scheme in the treasurer’s office six years ago. But he fled to Pakistan in the spring of a year ago.
“While the nuances of the process are unclear, he had asked his Pakistani lawyer to withdraw opposition to the U.S. extradition efforts, which as we understand it, essentially paved way to this expedited circumstance”, Schneider said in an email.
Prosecutors once doubted that Pakistan would return Ahmad to the U.S., noting that the Asian country hasn’t extradited an American since 2006.
Prosecutors say that between 2009 and January 2011, Ahmad, good friend Mohammed Noure Alo, Canton-based monetary adviser Douglas E. Hampton and Chicago mortgage dealer Joseph Chiavaroli conspired to make use of Ahmad’s place on the state treasurer’s workplace to complement themselves and their companies by securing profitable state enterprise.
Turning to face his parents and beginning to cry, he said he wanted to thank them for ” staying with me” when no one else did.
Three co-defendants also have been convicted and sentenced.
The Justice Department said Hampton received $3.2 million in commissions for 360 trades on behalf of the treasurer’s office. He served as Chicago’s city comptroller after that.
