Builder investigated in alleged campaign money-laundering for Noguez
A Beverly Hills-based property developer is under investigation for allegedly using his daughters and two of his firm’s attorneys to launder illegal campaign contributions to Los Angeles County Assessor John Noguez, according to a search warrant obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
The warrant comes as the district attorney’s influence-peddling investigation focuses on whether commercial property owners who contributed to Noguez — and received significant property tax breaks — violated the law by hiding the true source of campaign money to the assessor.
Eskandar Bolour, founder of real estate firm Bolour Associates, with local properties stretching from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach, is suspected of asking two company executives to contribute $500 each to Noguez’s campaign and reimbursing them for those contributions, according to the warrant. Reimbursement checks signed by Bolour’s daughters were written to the two executives, attorneys Elliot Shirwo and Todd Allen, the warrant said.
The two lawyers were offered immunity to testify last year before a grand jury that was probing allegations of corruption in the assessor’s office, according to the warrant.
The warrant includes copies of checks dated May 2010 from Shirwo and Allen to Noguez’s campaign. Also included are copies of the alleged reimbursement checks, which were dated several days before the donations were made. Those checks each include memo lines that read “Noguez Assessor 2010 Contribution.”
No charges have been filed against Bolour or his associates named in the warrant. District attorney’s officials declined to comment, saying their investigation is ongoing.
Bolour is one of many property owners who were seeking reductions in property tax assessments when they contributed to Noguez’s campaign for assessor. The largely obscure county position is responsible for determining property taxes on more than 2 million homes and businesses.
Campaign records show that Bolour and one of his daughters, Sima Pakravan, each gave the maximum $1,000 to Noguez’s general election campaign in the fall of 2010, but neither gave to his primary campaign earlier that year.
Shirwo and Allen contributed to the primary in May 2010, records show. Pakravan and her sister, Ilana Bolour Naim, wrote them checks for the same amount a few days earlier, according to the warrant.
By May 2010, Noguez, who had worked for decades as a county property appraiser, had been promoted to special assistant to the assessor and was the clear front-runner to win election to the agency’s top job.
Noguez and two others in the assessor’s office are accused of being involved in a scheme that knocked hundreds of millions of dollars off the assessed values of properties in exchange for bribes and contributions to Noguez’s 2010 campaign.
The assessor’s office reduced the value of Bolour’s properties by at least $9.8 million in 2010 and 2011, prompting the county to send his companies refund checks worth $137,696, according to a Times review of county tax records.
In 2009, Bolour’s companies received less than $8,000 in county property tax refunds, records show.
Bolour, his daughters and Allen did not return calls for comment. Shirwo told two reporters who visited Bolour Associates’ office on Wilshire Boulevard that he was “not in a position” to respond on behalf of the firm and asked the reporters to leave. He said he would get back to them about the search warrant’s allegations but did not return calls in the weeks that followed.
The 2010 and 2011 tax refund checks coincided with a sharp downturn in property values, and it is unclear whether the assessor’s reevaluations for Bolour properties were out of the ordinary. Investigators did not mention the tax refunds in their application for the warrant.
Prosecutors have charged Noguez with taking more than $185,000 in bribes from Ramin Salari, a prominent tax consultant and campaign contributor, to lower taxes for properties on the Westside and in the South Bay.
Salari has also been charged in the alleged scheme, along with a top executive in the assessor’s office, Mark McNeil, and a former county appraiser, Scott Schenter. They have all pleaded not guilty.
Noguez, who took a paid leave of absence last June and spent nearly five months in jail after his arrest in October, is still officially the county assessor and continues to receive his $197,000 salary.
In announcing the first criminal charges against Noguez last fall, then-Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley described the case as the most significant public corruption scandal involving a county official in decades. He said his office was also examining whether some donors were illegally reimbursed for contributions to Noguez’s election campaign.
The investigation has been handled by the district attorney’s Public Integrity Division, which prosecutes corruption cases involving government officials. The office’s Justice System Integrity Division, which handles criminal prosecutions of attorneys, was contacted about the money-laundering allegations in September, district attorney’s investigator Holly Williams wrote in the search warrant.
Williams used the warrant to obtain bank statements for Shirwo, Allen and Bolour’s daughters in late March.
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