Photo via Scene archives
UPFRONT Councilman Ken Johnson Arrested on Corruption Charges, Finally CLEVELAND CITY Councilman Ken Johnson was arrested by local FBI officers Tuesday morning after a federal grand jury indicted him on 15 corruption-related charges. The charges stem, per the Department of Justice, from a scheme in which Johnson and his assistant, Garnell Jamison, defrauded the city by submitting false monthly expense reports for a decade. Johnson received the $1,200 monthly maximum as reimbursement for “ward services” that were never performed. Johnson is also alleged to have benefitted from federal dollars he steered to the Buckeye Shaker Square Development Corporation. Johnson, Jamison and the former head of Buckeye Shaker Square Development Corporation, John Hopkins, were all arrested Tuesday. Johnson is expected to appear, by videoconference, in federal court later Tuesday. “The allegations set forth in today’s indictment detail the exploitation of public office for personal gain,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Bridget M. Brennan, in a DOJ press release. “Such conduct may bring about a temporary financial benefit for those involved, but it harms the public’s confidence in its elected officials.” Equally harmful, no doubt, is the fact that these alleged crimes, and a panoply of related corrupt activities, have been out in the open for nearly three years. Former Cleveland. com columnist Mark Naymik was breaking a new scandalous Ken Johnson story on what felt like a daily basis though the summer and fall of 2018,and hardly anything was done about it. Johnson was permitted to keep his council sinecure, where he’s been double-dipping since 2013, with no repercussions of any kind. Talk about harming the public’s confidence in elected officials! The city made statements about investigating the allegations in Naymik’s reporting, and Council President Kevin Kelley, to avoid a cascade of negative PR and deeper investigative reporting, stopped allowing the monthly reimbursements. An outside auditor determined, in the aftermath, that a number of council members other
than Johnson, including Kelley, were improperly filing their monthly expense reports. Joe Jones, Kevin Bishop, Kerry McCormack, Mike Polensek, Anthony Hairston, Dona Brady, Anthony Brancatelli, Jasmin Santana and Brian Kazy were also named. Kelley then vowed to “tighten rules” governing these monthly reimbursements. The whole of Cleveland City Council should be squirming at this moment. They likely know that the FBI has been making the rounds in Ohio, and that Ken Johnson very well could be the first domino to fall in Cleveland. In 2020, Cincinnati was rocked as three council members there were charged with accepting bribes related to development deals. Four council members in Toledo were also indicted in a bribery and extortion scheme last year. Who›s next? -Sam Allard
Mayoral Candidate Basheer Jones’ Campaign Finance Report Raises Red Flags The unaudited year-end campaign finance report for Ward 7 Cleveland City Councilman Basheer Jones raises a number of serious red flags. Jones is an author, speaker and the first Muslim to serve on City Council. He has publicly stated that he intends to run for Cleveland Mayor in 2021 and in fact pulled petitions at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in recent days. As with other candidates, his campaign activities require ongoing scrutiny. But that scrutiny has proven difficult to apply. On his 2020 report, filed in late January, virtually all of his contributions were listed without names attached. The report reflects that Jones raised more than $80,000 from June 29 to Dec. 31. Among the Cleveland mayoral hopefuls, that’s more fundraising than all but Council President Kevin Kelley and young executive Justin Bibb. Only two of Jones’ nearly seventy individual contributions were identified by donor name: Kanubai Patel and Pratimaben Patel of Wickliffe gave $500 and $550 to Jones, respectively, in August. The majority of the other contributions appear to have been
made on Jones’ Act Blue site, but were tabulated in his report without identifying details. That’s against the law. A Cuyahoga County Board of Elections’ spokeswoman confirmed to Scene that the BOE had been in contact with Jones’ treasurer, who pleaded ignorance and said she was working to update the report. One of the line items, however, was a $12,086 contribution made on Nov. 4. Regardless of the contributor, that far exceeds the maximum allowable contribution for Cleveland mayoral candidates. The cap was set by city council in 2016 at $5,000 for an individual and $7,500 for a political action committee. Jones’ expenditures raise eyebrows as well. He spent $44,000 in 2020 — a non-election year — and paid a number of individuals and entities for work presumably unrelated to his campaign. In many instances, the descriptions of these payments were either gently massaged or wholly mischaracterized to present them as legitimate election activities. The largest contributions were to Jones’ friend Youssef Kromah, with whom he traveled to Egypt in December. Two expenditures totaling $6,500 to Kromah — erroneously spelled “Youssef Komah” in the report — were allegedly for Kromah’s
work as a “campaign strategy and marketing consultant.” Kromah is a self-described poet, author, public speaker, community activist and television host. His address listed on Jones’ report is Philadelphia, though Kromah’s website says that he is currently a student at the University of Cairo. His Facebook page also says that he currently lives in Cairo. Jones did not respond to multiple requests for comment submitted via phone and email about the 2020 report. Kromah, too, did not respond to an emailed series of questions. A voicemail was not returned. As evidenced from their Instagram accounts, though, Kromah accompanied Jones for portions of his December trip. He noted in a December 7 post that he and Jones had “adopted” an orphanage in Aswan, Egypt and had donated 30,000 Egyptian pounds (the equivalent of about $2,000 USD) to cover the expenses of the orphans there. It’s unclear if a portion of Jones’ payments to Kromah went to the orphanage or for other purposes — the trip itself, for example — but the second payment to Kromah, for $4,000, occurred on Dec. 3, shortly before Jones departed. Jones also listed an expenditure of
| clevescene.com | February 24-March 9, 2021
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