Federal prosecutors filed charges Monday against a new defendant accused of bribing former Public Works head Mohammed Nuru, this time with $20,000 in cash payments.
Ken Hong Wong is accused of giving Nuru a series of cash payments between December 2018 and July 2019 to hire an individual for an engineering job at Public Works, court records show. The person Wong allegedly wanted Nuru to hire was not named in the filings.
Wong is facing bribery and conspiracy charges. If convicted, he could face up to 15 years of imprisonment and $500,000 in fines, according to court filings.
Nuru was charged with a series of misdeeds in January 2020. That set off a wide-ranging corruption probe that ensnared 16 people in the following two years. The case against Wong represents the first new charges in the scandal since 2021.
Editor’s note: Court filings incorrectly indicated that Wong was in custody in connection to another federal case. This story has been updated accordingly.