The payments by three development firms, including Thomas Safran & Associates, led to explosive criminal charges this week against Los Angeles City Councilman Curren Price.
Amid the opening bell Tuesday in the latest corruption scandal that rocked Los Angeles City Hall, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced it had charged the veteran politician representing South Los Angeles with 10 counts of corrupt theft, three counts of perjury and Two counts of conflict of interest. Most of the charges relate to real estate corruption: Price is accused of failing to disclose that developers paid more than $160,000 to his wife’s consulting firm before he planned to vote on matters related to their project.
The 11-page criminal complaint in the case reveals where the money came from. Thomas Safran & Associates, a Brentwood-based multifamily development and management firm chaired by Thomas Safran, was nominated along with two lesser-known developers, GTM Holdings and WORKS, which previously Have worked or sought to work with the City of Los Angeles on homeless housing and affordable housing projects, including south los angeles.
The companies made a series of payments between 2019 and 2021 to Del Richardson & Associates, a real estate consulting firm run by Price’s wife, the complaint said.
In early 2019, a Safran & Associates-affiliated entity called Beach Avenue Housing LP wrote checks to the consulting firm for $14,400, $18,390 and $2,900, while in 2021 another Safran affiliated entity, Town Meadows LP, wrote A check for $29,052 was issued.
Meanwhile, Price voted in late 2019 to give nearly $4.7 million in city funding to a Safran & Associates housing project called Missouri and Bundy, and voted in 2021 to donate city property to the same project.
In 2020, a project entity owned by GTM Holdings wrote two checks to Price’s wife’s consulting firm for $20,545 each and another check for $5,490, just as Price voted to sell the city property to Before GTM was used on the project, the project was called Depot at Hyde Park.
The following year, another GTM-affiliated entity wrote a check for $51,700, and a few months later, Price voted to lower the sale price by nearly $600,000.
On Tuesday night, hours after the corruption allegations emerged, Price agreed to resign from his committee, and City Council President Paul Crekorian said he would move to have him suspended.
A Safran & Associates employee said the firm had no comment.
The phone number listed for GTM Holdings’ registered agent, Mark Walther, appears to have been disconnected, and contact information for WORKS was not immediately available.
