By IANS
New York : Two Indian American employees of the New York City’s department of transportation have been charged with soliciting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from a company handling bridge repairs.
The two high-ranking officials, Balram Chandiramani, director of the department’s movable bridges bureau, and Uday Shah, an assistant civil engineer, were arrested Tuesday but released the next day on $500,000 bail each.
They have orders to stay in the New York area, The New York Times reported Thursday.
The transportation department has suspended the two men without pay.
In court documents, investigators said that in a series of secretly recorded meetings, the employees pledged to manipulate negotiations against the city’s interest and arranged to accept kickbacks.
Prosecutors said the men could face 10-year prison sentences. Defence lawyers said they would plead not guilty, the Times reported.
The accusations concern repairs to the century-old Third Avenue Bridge in Manhattan spanning the Harlem River. The city hired Turkey-based Kiska Construction Corporation to perform repairs at a cost of $118 million. The work was completed last year.
Chandiramani and Shah have been accused of receiving kickbacks for assistance in a favourable settlement of claims to the tune of $16.5 million by Kiska but disputed by the department.
In a statement, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said a payment of $2.7 million to the company had been stopped, the Times said.