The chief investigator for the Los Angeles Housing Authority, Abel Ruiz, was abruptly fired this week after complaining that people inside the agency interfered with his efforts to get to the bottom of an $800,000 bid-rigging scheme, his attorney said Friday.
Housing Authority Executive Director Rudolf Montiel said that he could not comment on a personnel matter but denied any coverup. In fact, Montiel said, he had referred the bid-rigging matter to outside agencies, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, for "a thorough and complete investigation."
The Times reported last month that a housing authority manager, Victor Taracena, had awarded construction and design contracts to family members and to three firms with ties to present and former City Council members in the 14th District. Agency files showed that the competition for many of the contracts was fixed. Through his attorney, Taracena, who was fired, has denied wrongdoing.
City housing authority officials said Friday that they believe much of the work called for in those contracts was not done.
Ruiz's allegations bring new controversy to an already troubled agency, which has been beset by corruption and infighting in recent years. Montiel has portrayed himself as a reformer, intent on cleaning up the agency and focusing on serving about 100,000 of the poorest people in Los Angeles who are in need of places to live. Indeed, Montiel said he had hired Ruiz in 2005 to help him.
Ruiz headed the authority's internal controls department and did the initial investigation into the alleged bid-rigging.
But "in the middle of his fact-finding, he was stopped," when housing authority leaders decided to hand the case over to prosecutors, according to Ruiz's lawyer, Craig T. Byrnes. Ruiz saw this move as premature.
Then, the lawyer said, Ruiz learned of an odd development: Even though the case had been turned over to law enforcement, another official in the housing authority continued looking into it. His inquiry appeared to be focused on whether the work, much of which involved drawing plans to build ramps and other aids for the handicapped, was ever performed. Ruiz said no drawings had been found in agency files. Byrnes said that Ruiz asked that this effort stop so as not to alert possible criminals that they were under suspicion.
