2 Held on Katrina Bribery Charges

Two men who helped run a FEMA base camp for relief workers after Hurricane Katrina were indicted by a grand jury in New Orleans on Thursday, accused of attempting to solicit bribes from a food vendor in exchange for artificially inflating the size of the vendor’s contract.

Andrew Rose and Loyd Holliman, firefighters from Colorado, were each charged with one count of soliciting bribes as public officials, a felony with a maximum penalty of 15 years’ imprisonment and a fine, said Jim Letten, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

They were being held Thursday night at the Orleans Parish Prison in New Orleans.

“It was incumbent upon us to swiftly present this to a grand jury to send an unmistakable message that no fraud or any type of corruption will be tolerated post-Katrina, especially any fraud or corruption that threatens the integrity of the system designed to help the rebuilding process,” Letten said. “This scheme, if carried out successfully, would have not only corrupted a Louisiana contractor but would have cost taxpayers a lot of money.”

Rose’s attorney, Provino Mosca, said his client planned to plead not guilty at an arraignment next week.

Investigators made covert audiotapes that Rose wanted to review, Mosca said. “He’ll refresh his memory and then make a decision about what to do,” Mosca said.

Holliman’s attorney could not be reached for comment.

Rose and Holliman were among 3,500 part-time disaster assistance workers trained quickly after Katrina and brought by the Federal Emergency Management Agency into southern Louisiana.

They helped administer a FEMA base camp in Algiers, a district separated from the rest of New Orleans by the Mississippi River.

Because the district did not flood and remained relatively intact, it remains a hub for rebuilding efforts.

According to the indictment, Rose and Holliman began soliciting bribes from a local contractor in December.

In exchange, the men said, they would inflate the “head count” for a meal service contract, making the contract more valuable to the vendor, authorities allege.

Rose and Holliman allegedly demanded a $20,000 payment plus $2,500 a week. They were arrested Jan. 27 at the camp after each accepted an envelope containing $10,000 in cash, authorities said.

Officials declined to name the contractor but hailed him as a hero.

A history of corruption in Louisiana apparently has contributed to Capitol Hill resistance of a full-fledged federal rebuilding effort.

“While Louisiana has tolerated corruption in the past, I believe we are in the process of turning the corner,” Letten said.