The son of a Texas-based fast-food restaurant tycoon told a federal jury Tuesday he was “taken aback” when then-Ald. Ed Burke seemed to draw a direct link between helping with permit issues for their Southwest Side Burger King renovation and hiring Burke’s private law firm to do property tax appeals.
Zohaib Dhanani, a vice president for the company founded by his father, Dhanani Group, was the latest witness to paint Burke as wearing two hats, both as the City Council’s most powerful and longest-serving alderman and as a private lawyer prowling for business for his firm, Klafter & Burke.
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Dhanani was asked Tuesday about a phone call he had with Burke on June 27, 2017, two weeks after he and his father met with Burke at the Burger King site on South Pulaski Road, where they talked about a driveway permit as well as complaints about trucks parking overnight in the lot.
It was after that meeting that Burke took the Dhananis to lunch at the Beverly Country Club and first pitched his law firm to them, according to testimony.
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In the call, which was played for the jury, Burke started off with a hearty, “Hello, my friend in Houston! How are you?” before saying he wanted to check in because he hadn’t heard from them after their meeting.
Dhanani told the alderman that they had looked into the truck parking concerns and discovered that they did in fact own the lot at issue. “So I made you a half a million bucks?” Burke quipped as they both laughed.
Later in the call, Burke got down to brass tacks. “And um, we were going to talk about the real estate tax representation and you were going to have somebody get in touch with me so we can expedite your permits,” Burke said.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Burke, what was that last part?” Dhanani responded.
Dhanani told Burke he would follow up with the architect about the driveway permit and “have somebody from our Houston office reach out to you regarding the property taxes” since that wasn’t something he normally handled.
“OK, good,” Burke said. “I look forward to hearing from you and thanks for being responsive.”
Listen to the audio:
[ Ex-Ald. Edward Burke corruption trial: Evidence seen and heard by the jury ]
On direct examination, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker asked Dhanani what he thought of Burke’s overture.
“I was taken a back a little bit,” Dhanani testified, adding that he’d asked Burke to repeat himself “so I made sure that I heard it properly.”
It was not the way he was used to doing business, he said.
“It was a little unusual that the two were being linked together, the property taxes and the permits,” Dhanani told the jury.
Under questioning from Burke’s attorney, Dhanani acknowledged the alderman did not make any threats or try to intimidate him on the phone.
“All he did was mention the tax business, right?” Burke’s attorney, Chris Gair, asked.
“Correct,” Dhanani answered.
“You didn’t call the FBI, did you?” asked Gair.
Dhanani responded, “No.”
Gair also attempted to put a different spin on the lunch at the Beverly Country Club, where Burke pulled out a copy of a newspaper article to show the Dhananis how he’d won big property tax savings for a “high-profile” person.
The individual was then-President Donald Trump, and the article was about work Klafter & Burke did on Trump Tower in Chicago. However, U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall has barred specific references to Trump to avoid prejudicing the jury.
Gair pointed out that Burke’s law firm work was only a small part of what was a very friendly conversation, ranging from where Dhanani went to school to the fact that he was soon to be married.
Gair asked Dhanani whether Burke told him that being the father of the bride is like being the corpse at an Irish wake: “Not much is expected of him, but you can’t have the party without him.”
Dhanani laughed and said he did remember it.
And when it came to believing that Burke had linked the property tax work with the Burger King permits, Dhanani agreed with Gair that idea may have come to him “in retrospect” after the FBI questioned him about it in November 2018.
“You didn’t believe that before the agent’s questions?” Gair asked. Dhanani answered, “Correct.”
The Burger King episode is one of four main allegations in the racketeering indictment against Burke.
According to the charges, when the Dhananis dragged their feet on hiring Burke’s firm to do property tax appeals, Burke allegedly enlisted the help of his longtime ward aide, Peter Andrews Jr., to shut down the Burger King project over drummed-up permit issues, according to the charges.
Burke, 79, who served 54 years as alderman before leaving the City Council in May, is charged with 14 counts including racketeering, federal program bribery, attempted extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion and using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity.
Andrews, 73, is charged with one count of attempted extortion, one count of conspiracy to commit extortion, two counts of using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity and one count of making a false statement to the FBI.
A third defendant, Lake Forest developer Charles Cui, 52, is not charged as part of the Burger King episode.
Tuesday marked the 11th day of testimony in the historic trial, and prosecutors are inching closer to wrapping up their case in chief.
[ Ed Burke trial: What you need to know ]
In testimony Monday, Dhanani told the jury he had been placed in charge of renovating nearly two dozen Chicago-area Burger Kings in March 2017 when he received an email from a colleague warning that Burke was “angry” over issues with their run-down restaurant at 4060 S. Pulaski Road in Archer Heights.
“Next to the mayor, Burke is arguably the most powerful politician in Chicago,” the colleague, Jeff MacDonald, wrote. “He has been in office for 48 years ... without his signature, we cannot get a permit.”
[ Ex-Ald. Ed Burke corruption trial: Evidence seen and heard by the jury ]
Dhanani testified Tuesday the project had been shut down for weeks by the time he and his father, Shoukat, had a second in-person meeting, this time for drinks at the Union League Club on West Jackson Boulevard.
Dhanani said Burke arranged the Dec. 12 meeting and brought up the fact that “nobody from our office had reached out to him or his office about the property tax reduction work.”
Asked how Burke’s request made him feel, Dhanani said, “To me, it wasn’t my realm so I didn’t really have strong feelings either way.” But he also said the whole experience was “unusual.”
“I’ve never gone through anything like this before, and I’ve done quite a few remodels across the country,” Dhanani testified. “This is the only one that’s ever been shut down like this, ever.”
At the Union League Club meeting, Dhanani said, Burke also asked that he and his father to attend an upcoming fundraiser at his home for “a mayoral candidate.”
Though Dhanani couldn’t remember the candidate’s name, it’s been previously reported it was Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who at the time was running to replace outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Dhanani said he had no interest in attending the fundraiser, but they told Burke they’d go “to be cordial.”
“He invited us and we didn’t want to say ‘no’ right then and there,” Dhanani said. Ultimately, however, bad weather stymied the trip, and instead they donated $10,000 to Preckwinkle’s campaign — a contribution that was later returned.
Burke’s defense team, meanwhile, has painted Burke as a responsible steward of his ward who never tied the hiring of his law firm to any official action. The Dhananis indeed had failed to update the driveway permits necessary to do the work, and in the end they never even hired Klafter & Burke, the defense has argued.
In their cross-examinations Tuesday, lawyers for Burke and Andrews questioned a chart purportedly showing hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses the Burger King suffered because of Burke’s interference. Most of the delay in the Burger King remodel was actually because of the owners’ own issues getting the right permits and changing contractors, the defense lawyers pointed out.
Attorney Patrick Blegen, who represents Andrews, asked Dhanani specifically about his comment that the experience with the 14th Ward renovation was “unusual.”
“This Burger King was unusual?” Blegen said. “It’s the only one where you guys hadn’t gotten your driveway permits.”
Dhanani agreed.
Both Gair and Blegen also asked Dhanani about meeting with 17th Ward Ald. David Moore about another Burger King renovation where Moore pushed them to hire more local contractors. The defense suggested that Burke’s intervention wasn’t much different.
On redirect, however, Streicker asked Dhanani whether Moore ever pitched his private law firm to them or took them to lunch at a private country club.
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“Ever have an alderman do that other than Burke?” Strecker asked.
“No,” Dhanani said.
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Originally Published: Dec 05, 2023 at 8:25 am