PARK LA BREA OFFICIAL GUILTY OF BRIBERY, TAX EVASION.

Byline: TROY ANDERSON Staff Writer

In an outgrowth of a nearly three-year-old investigation into City Hall corruption, a prominent development executive pleaded guilty Wednesday to taking bribes from subcontractors and filing a false tax return.

John W. Archibald, 56, who since 1998 has been vice president of construction operations at Casden Properties Inc., took more than $100,000 from subcontractors in exchange for awarding them work on the $550 million Park La Brea apartment project, Los Angeles County prosecutors said.

``It's unfortunate when persons like John Archibald commit acts of bribery, corruption and tax fraud,'' said Juliet Schmidt, deputy district attorney in the Public Integrity Division.

Archibald and his attorney, Michael Fitzgerald, had no comment.

Under a plea bargain for the bribery counts, Archibald is due back in court Oct. 4, when he is expected to be sentenced to spend 15 consecutive weekends at the Pasadena City Jail -- and pay his own expenses for being there -- and to be put on probation for five years. He also is expected to be fined more than $10,000 and ordered to pay $155,000 in restitution to Casden and $25,780 to the Franchise Tax Board.

A Casden spokeswoman said attorneys are reviewing ``how best to separate'' Archibald from the company.

In a printed statement, real estate mogul Alan Casden said he was Archibald's victim, and Casden accused investigators of bungling the case from the outset in order to help District Attorney Steve Cooley's re- election bid.

``The financial dealings between the subcontractors and Mr. Archibald were old-fashioned bribes, not campaign money-laundering, and this should have been evident to expert investigators from the beginning,'' Casden said.

``From the beginning, apparently, the D.A. had it all wrong. ... Their incompetence and wrongful allegations have caused me incalculable business harm.''

A spokeswoman noted that neither Casden nor the company had ever been charged with any wrongdoing.

``They had, however, been wrongly and falsely implicated in the investigation for what Mr. Casden believes was for the sole purpose of bolstering the D.A.'s re-election campaign,'' the Casden spokeswoman said.

Archibald's plea is the latest to emerge as investigators pursue allegations of corruption at City Hall, including accusations that former Mayor James Hahn's administration engaged in ``pay-to-play'' contracting practices.

And it comes nearly two years after Archibald and more than a dozen Casden subcontractors pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of laundering more than $200,000 in contributions to candidates in the 2001 city elections.

``District Attorney Steve Cooley and his office are very committed to zealously investigating and prosecuting criminal activity, including bribery and corruption, that is discovered in the course of investigations,'' Schmidt said.

Officials said it was during that original inquiry that investigators discovered that Casden Properties' subcontractors made deposits to Archibald's personal credit card account between November 1999 and December 2001.

Prosecutors said Archibald, a Simi Valley resident, accepted the money from subcontractors in exchange for letting them work on Park La Brea, 1,500 apartments, with midrange to luxury pricing, near Los Angeles' landmark Farmers Market.

``We looked at many of Archibald's financial records and saw that he was receiving credit card payments from the subcontractors -- the same subcontractors he also bundled contributions from that seemed suspicious,'' Schmidt said.

``In this case, the money was going into Archibald's personal credit cards. When we investigated, we found out this happened in proximity to them receiving contracts: `I'll give you a contract, but you pay part of my credit card bill.'''

The California Franchise Tax Board also reviewed Archibald's tax returns for 2000 and 2001 and found that he had not reported the deposits on his tax returns, Schmidt said.

District attorney investigators wrote in their report that they opened the case against Archibald in January 2005 after discovering that, between November 1999 and December 2001, 13 subcontractors made 17 separate deposits totaling $112,194 to his credit card account.

``The subcontractors made the checks payable to `Chase Bank,''' investigators wrote. ``The payments were made at or near the time the subcontractors were awarded contracts to work on the Park La Brea project for Casden Properties Inc.''

District Attorney's Office spokeswoman Jane Robison emphasized that the Archibald case was not part of the pay-to-play corruption scandal that resulted in the arrest last week of former Hahn administration commissioner Leland Wong on bribery charges.

``This grew out of our investigation of money-laundering of campaign contributions,'' Robison said. ``This involved laundering campaign contributions where they were trying to avoid city codes (on $1,000 campaign contribution limits), and they made contributions and paid the people who actually made the contributions back.''

Investigators accused Archibald and the subcontractors of hiding the true source of campaign donations by reimbursing contributions to City Council members Wendy Greuel and Jack Weiss, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and mayoral candidate Kathleen Connell.

``The candidates were never alleged to have done anything wrong. Nor were they alleged to have been aware that they were getting these campaign contributions from these people,'' Robison said.

troy.anderson(at)dailynews.com

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