Pace is one of the largest bus services in North America.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: An Indian American manager at Pace, one of the largest bus services in North America, was revealed to have taken more than $280,000 in kickbacks in exchange for helping information technology contractors land lucrative positions at the suburban bus agency.
Rajinder Sachdeva of Schaumburg, Illinois, was arrested Wednesday and subsequently released on $150,000 cash bond the following day.
The 22-page federal complaint alleges that Sachdeva, department manager of applications at Arlington Heights-based Pace, used a business co-owned by his wife to try to conceal some of the kickback money, according to the Chicago Tribune. However, she was not charged with any criminal wrongdoing.
The Chicago Sun Times reported one company paid Sachdeva and his wife more than $64,000 while its contractors worked at Pace.
Sachdeva allegedly told another contractor to submit invoices for work at PACE to that company using the false name “Sue Peters.”
Pace ultimately paid the company for the invoice, but federal prosecutors claim Sachdeva told a cooperating witness to pay the contractor only 80 percent of what the company had billed.
Authorities started making significant headway in their case when the co-owner of Sachdeva’s wife’s company agreed to wear a hidden microphone during several meetings with Sachdeva, including a January meeting at a McDonald’s restaurant in Schaumburg, according to the charges.
At that meeting, Sachdeva and the informant spoke in Hindi about how to disguise kickback payments on tax forms as rent for office Pace, according to the Tribune.
Pace Chairman Richard Kwasneski said in a statement that his company places “the utmost importance on maintaining the public’s trust, so it was without hesitation that [they] actively partnered with the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office over the last several months” to aid in the investigation.