New report again casts shadow on Gandhi, considered the most powerful non-elected official in Washington, DC.
Bureau Report
WASHINGTON, DC: There is fresh scrutiny of the dealings of District of Columbia’s Chief financial Officer Natwar Gandhi, with a report today in The New York times profiling and interviewing a former employee who worked under him, who claims he was fired drawing attention to misconduct in city contracting; Gandhi has countered by calling him a disgruntled employee.
The Washington Post had recently run an investigative report, with a former internal-affairs chief testifying that Gandhi, who oversees a $10 billion budget, tried to control the content and release of audits because he feared that they would “get out to the press and make him look bad.”
That account by the former official, Robert Andary, echoes the position of his successor in the job, William J. DiVello, who abruptly resigned earlier, after he said Gandhi’s senior managers had refused to make public an updated version of an audit critical of the city’s tax office, reported the Post.
Now, the Times has tried to probe the alleged misdeeds at Gandhi’s office by interviewing chief contract officer, Eric W. Payne, who before he was fired almost four years ago, oversaw millions of dollars in city contracts.
The report said since he was fired almost four years ago, Payne has been locked in a bitter dispute with Gandhi, his former boss and one of the most powerful unelected officials in Washington. At least one federal criminal investigation has sprung directly from concerns that Payne says he raised when he was a contracting officer and included in a lawsuit over his dismissal. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Gandhi’s office as well.
The legal feud has taken an unusually personal tone. In a second lawsuit, Payne accused Gandhi of defaming him in public statements and in private e-mail circulated to business leaders, preventing him from finding new work, reported the Times.
According to the report, Payne was fired, he has said, for resisting efforts by city officials, including Mayor Vincent C. Gray and at least one City Council member, to scrap a $38 million lottery contract with the winning bidder. The fight has played out in the footlights of another scandal: an inquiry into Gray’s 2010 election, which has been tainted by revelations that a wealthy supporter bankrolled an off-the-books “shadow campaign.” In unrelated scandals, two City Council members resigned this year after one pleaded guilty to bank fraud and the other to theft.
Gandhi is considered the guardian of Washington’s treasury, a position created during the city’s near-insolvency in the 1990s. But his credibility was damaged several years ago after Harriette M. Walters, a manager in the city tax office, pleaded guilty to stealing $48 million, raising questions about oversight in his office, said the Times report.
In recent months, Gandhi’s office has attracted scrutiny as sealed court documents have trickled out to the news media.
Earlier this month, The Washington Post and other newspapers published a draft of a report that exonerated Payne of wrongdoing while sharply criticizing a City Council member, Jim Graham, who has been in the lottery scandal’s spotlight because of his objections to the minority partner in the winning lottery bid.
The Times report said the acrimony has taken a deeply personal turn. Gandhi subpoenaed businesses where Payne applied for jobs and his past employers, former President Bill Clinton among them. Lawyers for Gandhi also questioned Payne’s doctors about his medical history and tried to depose his pregnant wife.
Over the summer, Gandhi forwarded a letter to the Chamber of Commerce saying Payne was fired because of “poor performance issues,” said the Times. He was also sharply critical of Payne in an interview with The Washington Post, saying he was “nasty to people” and “rude to outsiders.”
Payne sued for defamation. In an unusual move, the city invoked a law intended to shield defendants from frivolous lawsuits, calling Payne’s defamation lawsuit “an improper and meritless action to garner publicity.”
Gandhi, on his website, describes himself as “an accountant by training but a poet at heart.” He has published two volumes of poetry written in his mother tongue Gujarati, a language spoken by some forty million people in the western region of India, he writes.
This website includes Gandhi’s published volumes of poetry and other related writing, with sonnets in Gujarati. Published volumes of poetry include: America, America (2004) and India, India (2006). Both books have been published by Image Publications of Mumbai.