Years before Hawai\u02bbi County housing official Alan Rudo became involved in the affordable housing schemes that led eventually to federal charges against him and three other individuals, the federal prosecutor is alleging that Rudo and two of the other men charged were involved in a \u201ctest run\u201d of their scheme. Rudo pleaded guilty in 2022; jury selection in the trial of the others is set to begin May 12 in U.S. District Court in Honolulu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The outlines of the \u201ctest run\u201d appear in a brief that the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office filed with the court last month, stating that it was intending to admit evidence of that \u201ctest run\u201d at trial. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOn May 20, 2014, two tax deeds were recorded for the conveyance of two one-acre parcels of land in Kea\u02bbau (\u2018the Parcels\u2019) to [Rajesh P.] Budhabhatti,\u201d the brief states. Budhabatti is one of the three defendants facing trial this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The brief goes on to say that five months later, Budhabhatti registered a business with the state called ERHI LLC, of which Budhabatti was manager. On October 6, 2014, Hawai\u02bbi County entered into an affordable housing agreement (AHA) with ERHI, \u201cupon the advice and recommendation of Alan Rudo,\u201d according to the brief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under the terms of the AHA, ERHI was to build at least two affordable housing rental units on the land, and in return, the county awarded the company four excess affordable housing credits (AHCs), the federal prosecutor states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One month later, on November 6, on the advice of Rudo, the county \u201capproved an Agreement for Assignment of Affordable Housing Credits\u201d between ERHI and Renaissance Development, LLC, according to the information in the prosecutor\u2019s notice. Budhabhatti signed for ERHI, and in return for the credits, ERHI received $68,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs previously agreed, Budhabhatti paid [co-defendant Gary] Zamber and Rudo a portion of the proceeds from that sale with Rudo\u2019s portion constitution a bribe or kickback in exchange for his official acts related to ERHI,\u201d the prosecutor alleges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 Patricia Tummons<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Years before Hawaiʻi County housing official Alan Rudo became involved in the affordable housing schemes that led eventually to federal charges against him and three other individuals, the federal prosecutor is alleging that Rudo and two of the other men … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[338,537],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-land-use","category-may-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}