The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former Atlanta watershed official is indicted on bribery charges
Former Atlanta Watershed Commissioner Jo Ann Macrina faces federal bribery charges, according to an indictment unsealed Friday.
Macrina is the fifth high-ranking city of Atlanta official to be charged in the federal government’s ongoing corruption investigation at City Hall, but she is only one of two officials who have vowed to fight the charges.
The other, Mitzi Bickers, is scheduled to go on trial in September.
Macrina has been charged with bribery, conspiring to commit bribery, and aiding and abetting the preparation of false income tax returns, according to the indictment.
In a statement Friday, Macrina’s attorney, Paul Kish, said that his client began cooperat
ing with federal investigators the day after she lost her job in May 2016 and had met with federal agents more than 25 times.
“The government apparently indicted her [Macrina] after failing to obtain enough evidence against the main targets of its investigation,” Kish wrote. “The prosecution has now turned on its own witness and indicted the person who told investigators where to find the fraud.”
The indictment alleges that between 2014 and the time the city fired her, Macrina helped a joint venture firm led by Lohrasb “Jeff ” Jafari win an architectural, engineering and design contract worth $11 million, even though the firm initially scored at the bottom of the bid rankings.
Last year, in a 51-count indictment, federal prosecutors allege that Jafari made multiple payments to Adam Smith, Atlanta’s former chief procurement officer, up until Smith’s arrest in early 2017.
Now Jafari, who is currently awaiting trial, is alleged to have bribed Macrina, according the indictment against her and a superseding indictment filed against Jafari this week.
“During this time, Macrina discussed potential employment with Jafari and accepted items of value from Jafari ... in exchange for or as a reward for providing Jafari with access to information and preferential treatment with respect to City of Atlanta projects,” the document reads.
According to the indictment, Macrina accepted money and other items of value from Jafari, including but not limited to $10,000 in cash, jewelry, a room at a luxury hotel in Dubai, and landscaping work at her metro Atlanta home in April and May 2016.
The indictment says that Jafari’s company paid Macrina $30,000 after she was fired and that Macrina failed to report the money on her income tax returns.
However, Kish said in his statement that federal agents never asked Macrina if she had worked for Jafari, but she disclosed it to them in the summer of 2017. The statement also says that Macrina did not keep the $10,000 but gave it to someone else, though it does not specify to whom.
As for the jewelry gift, Macrina only accepted the item to be polite, the statement says. And Kish said that Macrina never asked for the landscaping.
“These were cheap plants placed into Ms. Macrina’s yard by Jafari at a point when Ms. Macrina was out of town,” the statement says. “The plants were of the type she did not even like. This is certainly an odd way to bribe someone.”
The statement says that Macrina has amended her tax returns to reflect the payments from Jafari, but it does not say when the returns were amended.
“Instead of going after those engaging in corruption, the United States decided to deflect attention from its inability to make a case against other people,” the statement says.
Kish told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he is in the process of arranging for Macrina to surrender to federal authorities next week.
Former Mayor Kasim Reed fired Macrina on May 20, 2016, the same day he also terminated Airport Manager Miguel Southwell.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office later issued the city a subpoena for information regarding both employees, contracts and records related to bidding processes — a demand that revealed the wide-ranging nature of the investigation.