Behind the corruption indictment of U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, his close-knit family of Harvard-educated daughters and politically active siblings is interwoven into his alleged schemes as unnamed but key players.

On Monday, Jefferson, a nine-term Democrat, was indicted on 16 counts, including allegations he took bribes, laundered money and misused his congressional office for business dealings in Africa. He is accused of taking about $500,000 in bribes and travel expenses and about 34 million shares of corporate stock.

Jefferson, who has not made a public appearance since the indictment, faces arraignment Friday in U.S. District Court in Virginia. Jefferson's lawyer has argued the congressman's business dealings were not connected to his political life. A not guilty plea is expected.

Since the probe started two years ago, two Jefferson associates, Vernon Jackson, CEO of iGate Inc., a Louisville, Ky.-based telecommunications company, and Brett Pfeffer, a former congressional aide, have pleaded guilty to related charges.

The FBI alleges Jefferson promoted companies such as iGate seeking to do business in Africa in exchange for retainer payments, stock ownership and monthly fees funneled through dummy companies controlled by his family.

One of the companies, ANJ Group LLC, listed Andrea Jefferson, the congressman's wife, as manager. Mose Jefferson, his brother, acted as manager and registered agent of another company, B.E.P. Consulting Services LLC. In all, the indictment refers to five unnamed, unindicted family members.

In New Orleans, where Jefferson is the power behind one of the city's most influential political machines, the Progressive Democrats, the 60-year-old congressman and his family have long been dogged by allegations of blurring lines between public office and self-interest.

"State payrolls, parish payrolls, local payrolls, contracts, they've been there, at all levels of government," said Bernie Pinsonat, a Louisiana political pollster. "There's been a buildup to this." Peggy Wilson, a Republican former City Council president, tells a story about Jefferson dating to the early 1990s when he called her to his office to discuss a possible run for mayor.

"I said, 'Why do you want to run for mayor?"' Wilson said of the conversation. "And he said, 'Because you can't make any money in Washington."'

"I was flabbergasted," Wilson said.

Through a spokeswoman, Jefferson denied the conversation took place.

"Why would Congressman Jefferson ever say something as ridiculous as that to -- of all people -- Peggy Wilson? She has never exactly been an ally of the congressman's," Remi Braden-Cooper, Jefferson's press secretary, wrote in an e-mail.

Born in impoverished northeast Louisiana, the Bible-carrying, scripture-quoting Jefferson brought his family to New Orleans in the 1970s. He helped found what would become the South's largest black law firm.

"The tragic part is Jefferson's biography is quite a rags-to-riches, Horatio Alger, story," said Larry Powell, a Tulane University history professor. "He comes from the poorest, the Bangladesh of America, Lake Providence, La."

By reputation gifted with a brilliant mind, Jefferson was attracted to politics in his youth, becoming student body president at Southern University in Baton Rouge.

"I always thought the guy was somewhat years beyond his time," said Lonnie Hewitt, a New Orleans architect who attended L.B. Landry High School in suburban New Orleans with Andrea Jefferson and knows the family well.

After Harvard law school and a stint in the office of U.S. Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, D-La., Jefferson's star rose in the 1980s. He entered, but lost, mayoral contests and won a seat in the state Senate. A sister, Betty Jefferson, won a school board seat and later became an assessor, a position she still holds.

Entrance into public office did not stop the Jeffersons from doing business with government agencies.

As a state senator, Jefferson refused to stop representing state-run Southern University in legal matters. His position was eventually blessed by a state attorney general's opinion.

In 1989, Mose Jefferson and then-school board member Betty Jefferson were accused of trying to profit in a school uniform deal. Neither was found to have done anything wrong. Betty Jefferson also came under fire for slashing the tax assessment on her congressman brother's 27-unit apartment complex in 1998, shortly after she took office.

And in 1994, a legislative audit questioned a $50,000 payment to Andrea Jefferson by Grambling State University for teaching a class with a single student. And accusations of political nepotism have been leveled at her for her relationship with the Southern University System, which hired her in 2003 for about $72,000 a year as chief fundraiser as part of a legal settlement. She had sued in 2002 for being removed from a top academic job at the university's New Orleans campus.

The congressman's brother-in-law, former state Judge Alan Green, was caught up in an FBI corruption probe of the Jefferson Parish courthouse. Green is serving a 51-month sentence in federal prison for taking bribes from a bail bonds company.

More recently, the Jeffersons were blasted for a deal involving 16 vehicles donated by DaimlerChrysler to help the recovery from Hurricane Katrina. The company asked Jefferson to distribute the vehicles to public agencies. After he gave the vehicles to the City Council, though, one, a $30,000 Dodge Durango SUV, wound up in the hands of Mose Jefferson, and others went to nonprofit organizations with close ties to the Jefferson family.

The nonprofits also are the source of another controversy involving Jefferson's daughter, state Rep. Jalila Jefferson-Bullock, and a former aide, Renee Gill Pratt. Over a dozen years as state lawmakers, the two steered more than $7 million to the nonprofits, according to The Times-Picayune newspaper.

Last year, the FBI began investigating four of the charities, Central City Adult Education Agency, New Orleans Drug Education Intervention, the social services provider Care Unlimited Inc. and housing assistance center Orleans Metropolitan Housing and Community Development Inc.

Taken together, the family's dealings seem to have formed something of a chain, said Gary Clark, political science professor at Dillard University in New Orleans.

"In hindsight, those appear to have been very, very big red flags," said Clark.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)