An Indian American businessman, whose wife has been charged with bilking millions of dollars from the government, has strong financial ties with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, a media report said.
Chicago banker Amrish Mahajan has raised more than 500,000 dollars for the governor's political campaigns since 2001, the Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday. He also has used Governor's wife Patti Blagojevich as a real estate agent, generating 113,000 dollars for her -- her only commissions for the first 10 months of 2006, it said.
Mahajan's wife Anita was arrested last week on charges of overbilling millions of dollars on her state contract to provide drug screenings to clients of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
Her downtown Chicago company, K K Bio-Science Inc, has held the no-bid state contract since the early 1990s. The report said Mahajan was a driving force behind his wife drug-screening company, and is now facing questions about how it kept its long-standing state contract despite troubles with taxes, licensing and years of alleged fraud.
The 60-year-old Mahajan is President of Mutual Bank, and is often courted by city and state politicians as a man who can deliver support and money. He has been neither charged nor implicated in the fraud case, the report said.
Blagojevich has acknowledged the family friendship with the Mahajans but apparently has attempted to distance himself since media reports last year revealed the real estate deals involving Blagojevich's wife. "I know Amrish," Blagojevich said last week. "There is no relationship now."
