Mayor’s friend allegedly got tips
Companies headed by a friend of Detroit Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick won millions of dollars in contracts while receiving secret bidding advice from the Democratic mayor’s chief of staff, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Records and text messages indicated that Bobby Ferguson and the companies collected at least $45 million in city contracts.
Text messages from 2002 and 2003 show that the chief of staff at the time, Christine Beatty, provided Ferguson with bid strategies and sensitive project information. The mayor was directly involved in at least one discussion, the Free Press reported.
Ferguson, the city and a lawyer for Beatty all denied wrongdoing.
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