/ Local News

05/16/2008

By CAIN BURDEAU  / Associated Press

A former Army Corps of Engineers consultant and a dirt subcontractor were indicted Thursday on bribery charges stemming from an investigation into levee work after Hurricane Katrina.

Durwanda Elizabeth Morgan Heinrich, a dirt, sand and gravel subcontractor, allegedly conspired with two former corps workers to get confidential bid information for a $16.8 million levee project southwest of New Orleans in September 2006.

In exchange, Heinrich promised to give the workers, Kern Carver Bernard Wilson and Raul Miranda, 25 cents for every cubic yard of material used to build levees near Lake Cataouatche, the indictment said.

Heinrich was charged by a federal grand jury in New Orleans with one count of conspiring to commit bribery and two counts of offering a bribe to a public official.

Also indicted was Wilson, who was working for the corps as a consultant on the levee enlargement project. Wilson was charged with one count of conspiring to commit bribery and one count of demanding and agreeing to accept a bribe as a public official.

Last September, Miranda pleaded guilty to bribery.

The arrangement would have funneled $299,375 to Wilson and Miranda, the Justice Department said.

Miranda, 50, of Spring, Texas, was scheduled to be sentenced on April 23, but his sentencing was pushed back to Oct. 22. He faces up to 15 years in prison and heavy fines.

Miranda was a construction manager for Integrated Logistical Support Inc., also known as Ilsi Engineering, a New Orleans civil engineering firm hired to help the corps manage some of its projects.

The prime contractor on the Lake Cataouatche project is Manson Gulf LLC, a construction company based in Houma. Company officials said they were familiar with the probe but that Heinrich was not affiliated with their company.

The investigation surrounding the Lake Cataouatche project has been the only case of criminal wrongdoing in levee work so far prosecuted by the Justice Department.

After Katrina hit the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, flooded 80 percent of New Orleans and killed more than 1,600 people, Congress gave the corps billions of dollars to repair damaged levees and upgrade others.

Lake Cataouatche is southwest of New Orleans and protects an area of suburbs and small towns on the western side of the Mississippi River.

Maj. Timothy Kurgan, a corps spokesman in New Orleans, declined to comment Thursday on ongoing litigation but said his agency had turned over information about alleged wrongdoing to the Army's criminal investigation division.