Honolulu’s former managing director, corporation counsel and chair of the Police Commission were charged with misdemeanor conspiracy by the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday for their handling of a $250,000 retirement payment
in 2017 to former Honolulu
Police Chief Louis Kealoha,
according to federal court
documents.
The single misdemeanor charge against the trio is a departure from the felony charges secured against the former city officials more than three years ago. It is part of a plea agreement Opens in a new tab federal prosecutors revealed in February that ensures no time in federal prison.
The deal signals an end to a long-running public corruption probe by federal prosecutors in California that began with the Kealoha case and expanded to examine the intersections between politics, business and law enforcement in Hawaii.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Wheat, the special prosecutor handling the case from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, retired Dec. 31.
Federal prosecutors have not said why they decided to cut a misdemeanor deal after securing felony indictments on
Dec. 16, 2021.
“We have no comment at this time,” Kelly Thornton, director of media relations for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Attorneys representing the three ex-city officials did not reply to Star-Advertiser requests for comment.
In January 2022 former Corporation Counsel Donna Yuk Lan Leong, ex-Honolulu Police Commission Chair Max John Sword and then-Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s Managing Director Roy Keiji Amemiya Jr. entered not-guilty pleas to felony charges that they conspired to defraud the county and federal government by paying Kealoha to retire in 2017.
At a 10 a.m. hearing today before Senior U.S. District Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi, Sword and Leong will agree to pay a $100,000 fine and serve one year of supervised release as part of their plea agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice.
Leong and Sword each signed a plea agreement to “the count in the forthcoming superseding information, with a sentence of time served, one year supervised release, and restitution,”
according to federal court records.
That superseding information was filed Monday.
Amemiya entered into
a deferred-prosecution agreement with federal
prosecutors, according to court documents.
The charge against Amemiya will be amended to a misdemeanor, and provided Amemiya abides by the conditions of the agreement, the charge against him will be dismissed as long as he is not convicted of a crime.
Amemiya’s compliance will depend on “certification by the Government’s office, restitution, and a community service component.”
He has to pay a $50,000 fine and serve two years of federal supervised release. Amemiya tried to have the case against him dismissed in January 2022.
“Starting Dec. 1, 2016 and continuing until July 2020, Amemiya, Leong, and Sword, while acting under color of law, did knowingly and willfully combine, conspire, and agree together with each other and with others to deprive the residents of Honolulu, Hawaii, of the rights secured and protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States, namely, the right to procedural due process,” according to the federal criminal information filed Monday.
Amemiya, Leong and Sword have been free on $50,000 bonds since January 2022.
They were accused of conspiring to pay Kealoha with federal funds and money from the Honolulu Police Department’s salary pool and avoiding City Council review and
approval.
The investigation led to prison sentences for Kealoha and his then-wife, former Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha.
Louis Kealoha was sentenced to seven years in prison and will have to
pay back the $250,000
settlement.
Katherine Kealoha received 13 years in prison for leading the operations that defrauded her grandmother out of her home and framed her uncle for stealing the
Kealohas’ mailbox.
Wheat and his team of assistant U.S. attorneys from San Diego tried to to prosecute former Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro, businessman Dennis Mitsunaga and Mitsunaga employees Terri Ann Otani, Aaron Shunichi Fujii, Chad Michael McDonald and Sheri Jean Tanaka.
Federal prosecutors tried to prove that Kaneshiro prosecuted a former Mitsunaga employee in exchange for campaign contributions.
A jury found all of them not guilty Opens in a new tab.
Following his acquittal, Kaneshiro told the Star-Advertiser the federal investigation against him and Mitsunaga began with a grudge Opens in a new tab and took eight years before a jury acquitted them in less than two days.
Amemiya, Leong and Sword avoided trial for allegations Opens in a new tab that they dodged City Council review and manipulated the Honolulu Police Department to pay part of Kealoha’s settlement with money meant for vacant funded positions and then made “materially false and misleading representations and omissions” to the City Council to get money to obtain a reallocation of city funds to cover the Kealoha payment, according to the original indictment.
They allegedly persuaded HPD leadership to tell the Council that the department’s request for additional 2017 fourth-quarter funds was caused by a “salary shortfall” prompted by the payout to Kealoha in the third quarter.
Legal memos, letters and correspondence from the deputy corporation counsel in 2017 and San Francisco- based law firm Farella Braun and Martel, contracted by the corporation counsel, show that the process used to pay Kealoha was like separation agreements reached with other former city officials that did not require a Council review or vote.
