Former D.C. tech workers sentenced

Two former employees of the District of Columbia’s Office of the
Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) were sentenced to prison on Friday for
their roles in a bribery and kickback scheme that began in 2005 and
continued until their arrests in March of last year.

Yusuf Acar, former acting chief
security officer in the D.C. CTO, was sentenced
to 27 months in prison in U.S. District Court for D.C. on Friday.
Farrukh Awan, a former contract employee, was sentenced to 14 months.
The two previously pleaded guilty, admitting to steering projects to
local IT contractor Advanced Integrated Technologies and accepting
hundreds of thousands in bribes from CEO Sushil Bansal.

Acar
admitted to accepting $559,000 in bribes from Bansal, who also pleaded
guilty and was sentenced on Aug. 6 to 20 months in prison. Acar, who has
been held in prison without bond since his arrest in March of 2009, was
ordered to pay more than a half million dollars in restitution to the
District of Columbia. Awan was ordered to pay $157,000 in restitution,
while Bansal and his company must pay $845,000.

The case attracted
headlines last March when the FBI raided
the OCTO one week after the previous chief technology officer, Vivek
Kundra, was named federal chief information officer by President Obama.
The White House responded by placing
Kundra on leave, only reinstating him after former Virginia Gov. and
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine weighed
in on his behalf.

Kundra served as CTO from March 2007 to March 2009 but was not a target of the investigation, though his office did award some contracts to Bansal’s company under his watch. During a November 2008 interview
Kundra claimed his use of dashboard applications had brought an
unprecedented level of transparency to the District’s IT procurements.

“It’s about holding people accountable,” he said at the time. Kundra has brought the same emphasis on dashboards and contractor accountability to his position as federal chief information officer.

Acar was reportedly elevated during Kundra’s tenure and given a say
on hiring decisions, which he used to benefit former employees of
Advanced Integrated Technologies in return for kickbacks from Bansal. Five people in total, including three former D.C. government employees, have been charged in the scheme.