The FBI raided the former office of Obama administration official Vivek Kundra and arrested two people in a corruption probe on Thursday, but Kundra is not a target of the investigation, a spokeswoman for Washington’s mayor said.
The FBI searched the offices of the District of Columbia’s chief technology officer, a post formerly held by Kundra, as part of an investigation into employee corruption there, spokeswoman Mafara Hobson said.
President Barack Obama last week named Kundra to be the federal government’s chief information officer, responsible for overseeing government computer systems. Kundra was speaking today at the FOSE conference in D.C.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs called the investigation a “serious matter” and declined further comment.
Yusuf Acar, who works in the city’s technology office, and another man, Sushil Bansal, were arrested on bribery and other charges, according to court documents.
Acar describes himself as the information office’s chief security officer in a video posted on its Web site.
Bansal is a former Washington government employee who heads Advanced Integrated Technologies Corp., a technology firm that has won contracts from the city’s technology office.
He won the Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2008 from an association of Indian-Americans. The company could not immediately be reached for comment.
According to court documents, Acar was accused of conspiring to commit bribery, fraud, money laundering and conflict-of-interest violations while Bansal was accused of conspiring to commit bribery and money laundering.
According to the documents, they allegedly took part in a variety of schemes, including billing for so-called “ghost employees,” that involved stealing money from the government of the District of Columbia.
