Former U.S. official gets 19 years for $30 million bribery scheme

WASHINGTON — A former manager with the Corps of Engineers was sentenced to more than 19 years in prison Thursday for orchestrating a $30 million bribery and kickback scheme that authorities called historic in scope.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan called Kerry Khan’s conduct, which included wiretapped conversations describing a planned sexual encounter with a teenage girl, “shocking, vicious and cruel.” The judge imposed a sentence four years lon- ger than what prosecutors wanted.

Khan, 55, a resident of the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Va., pleaded guilty last year to orchestrating the fraud, which prosecutors call the largest domestic bribery and bid-rigging scheme in the history of federal contracting cases.

Khan acknowledged collecting bribes from corrupt contractors in exchange for approving bogus or inflated invoices for services that were never provided. He used the funds to pay for mistresses located in several states and overseas as well as for luxuries including Rolex watches, first-class airplane tickets, expensive clothes and a spacious home that a prosecutor described as the “Khan Majal,” authorities said.

Khan apologized, saying the crimes occurred during a “very, very dark period of my life.”

Though prosecutors requested a 15-year sentence, Khan’s lawyer asked for 10 years, saying the punishment should be more in line with what other defendants in the case have received. Both sides acknowledged Khan has provided extensive cooperation, including giving information about his brother and one of his sons, as part of a wideranging investigation that so far has yielded guilty pleas from 15 people and one company.

Prosecutors said the bribery scheme spanned several years but unraveled in October 2011 with the assistance of a contractor who cooperated with the FBI and the arrests of Khan and three other men, including his son. The arrests came just as the men were about to steer a planned $1 billion deal to a favored contractor in exchange for even more money.