CHICAGO — On a warm Tuesday evening in late June 2019, state Sen. Emil Jones III walked out onto the patio at a suburban steakhouse and into an hourslong dinner that would set the table for alleged bribes — and subsequent federal corruption charges.
Jones, D-Chicago, dressed in a polo shirt that matched the orange rind in one of his dinner companion’s condensation-glazed cocktails, had been asked to the meal by his colleague, state Sen. Martin Sandoval, D-Chicago, in order to broker an understanding with Omar Maani, the co-founder of a Chicago-based red-light camera company.
In three of the General Assembly’s previous four legislative sessions, Jones had proposed measures that Maani and his company, SafeSpeed, viewed as an existential threat to the red-light camera industry. But only one had ever gotten even partially through the legislative process, thanks to Sandoval’s tight control over the Senate Transportation Committee, which he chaired.
“He won’t let my bill even see the light of day,” Jones joked as all three of them laughed. “S—, Marty. I thought you loved me, Marty.”
Maani had just finished explaining that he and Sandoval had been friends for about a decade and were “about as close as people can get.” A few minutes later, Sandoval extended Jones an invitation into that relationship.
“I’m glad you came, Emil,” Sandoval said. “Omar wants to be your friend.”
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But Maani, who had been bribing Sandoval for years, was motivated by something other than friendship — or even protecting his business. The red-light camera entrepreneur was acting under instructions from the FBI, with whom he’d been cooperating since agents knocked on his door one early morning in January 2018.
Jones and Sandoval were two of “dozens and dozens and dozens” of others Maani secretly recorded for the feds’ investigation, he told a federal jury Wednesday as Jones’ corruption trial kicked off at the federal courthouse in Chicago.
A few weeks after that June 2019 dinner, Maani and Jones met up alone for a meal at one of the senator’s favorite spots: Steak 48 in Chicago’s swanky River North neighborhood. Jones mentioned that he’d previously held a campaign fundraiser at the restaurant, and Maani picked up the conversational thread from the previous meeting, asking about Jones’ next fundraiser. It happened to be scheduled for the following month.
“So let me ask you this: In an ideal world, how much would you want me to come up with or raise or what have you for it?” Maani asked, pausing briefly to order another drink. “You tell me a number.”
“I don’t give folks numbers,” Jones said after a beat. “Just whatever you can raise for me, that’d be nice. I’m not greedy.”
But Maani pressed him, and after a complimentary detour in which the senator told Maani he was “a good guy” and that he enjoyed his company, Jones gave him a goal.
“If you can raise me five grand, that’d be good,” the senator said.
“Done,” Maani replied.
Earlier Wednesday, the jury of five men and seven women were told that Jones never actually received the $5,000 from Maani.
“That’s because FBI agents went to interview the defendant instead,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Prashant Kolluri said during his brief opening statements. “But the crime here is the agreement.”
Immediately after Maani agreed to raise $5,000 for Jones, the senator raised another request.
“But most importantly, I have an intern working in my office,” Jones told Maani. “And I’m trying to find him another job, another part-time job.”
Maani quickly agreed to find something for the engineering major, asking Jones to have a resume sent over and musing that maybe the intern could be made a “reviewer” at SafeSpeed, a job Maani explained to the jury Wednesday as the person who reviews red-light camera footage to determine whether a driver committed a traffic violation. Reviewers don’t have final say in municipalities outside of Chicago; a local police department does.
But Jones’ former intern, who is expected to testify Thursday, was never made a reviewer. Instead, Maani began paying him the suggested $15 an hour for 20 hours per week even though he didn’t have any work for the intern to do. After six weeks, the payments stopped when the FBI made Maani’s cooperation known when agents interviewed Jones the same day Sandoval and others were publicly raided in September 2019.
Kolluri accused Jones of engaging in “politics for profit” and promised the jury they’d “get to hear the defendant’s lies straight from his mouth,” as one of the three charges Jones faces is for allegedly lying to the FBI about his agreements with Maani.
But Jones’ defense team spent their short openings previewing how they planned to go after Maani, with attorney Joshua Adams telling the jury that the FBI mole was a “serial briber” who got an extraordinary deal from the feds.
“You’re gonna hear him testify about all the bribes he made, all the lies he told and the lengths he went to conceal those bribes,” Adams said.
Maani’s bribery charge was dismissed in 2023 — the year after Jones himself was charged, but four years after Sandoval and other local elected officials caught up in the red-light camera probe were indicted. Sandoval died in late 2020 after pleading guilty to his charges. Jones is the only figure to take his case to trial, as the others also pleaded guilty.
Read more: FBI agents search state senator’s office | Full search warrant suggests broad corruption probe of Sen. Martin Sandoval | Sandoval pleads guilty to bribery and tax fraud
On Wednesday, Maani told the jury how he developed a friendship with Sandoval “because we needed his support in the legislature,” adding that Sandoval “held a lot of sway” not only in the legislature but also within the Illinois Department of Transportation, which regulates red-light cameras.
Maani said he began giving Sandoval “personal benefits” not long after they’d first met, including cigars and cigar labels.
In the June 25, 2019, recording, Sandoval told Jones that Maani had thrown a bachelor party for the senator’s son at a suburban cigar club, but Jones said he’d recently quit smoking when offered a cigar. Sandoval also joked to Maani that he and Jones were “both brought up by the same daddy,” referring to Jones’ father, former Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr.
Jones Jr., who was sitting in the courtroom Wednesday, listened as Maani claimed that when Sandoval said on the recording that the former Senate president taught him “the craft” of politics, it meant “accepting personal benefits.”
“We took him out to dinner all the time,” Maani told the jury Wednesday when describing what he did for Sandoval. “Gave him campaign contributions, but like I said we tried to conceal it with different companies we control.”
Asked by Assistant U.S. Attorney Tiffany Ardam who Maani was referring to as “we,” Maani said it was SafeSpeed, though in his secret recordings, Maani emphasized that he was acting alone.
SafeSpeed, which in 2023 changed its name to AllTech Tracking and sued Maani for reputational harm, said in a statement Wednesday that it was “deeply offended to see that Omar Maani, despite admitting to criminal acts, is now refusing to accept responsibility for his own criminal conduct” and accused Maani of making “false claims about SafeSpeed” on the witness stand.
“We want to be absolutely clear Omar Maani has not been affiliated with the company since February 2020 and we stand by our original statement: Our company was unaware of any illegal activities Omar Maani may have engaged in,” AllTech said, adding that Maani “was a rogue employee.”
Maani explained to the jury that he and SafeSpeed viewed that Jones’ 2019 bill, which called for a statewide study on red-light cameras, was viewed as a “prelude to a ban” on such technology. Maani hoped he could at least persuade Jones to amend his bill to call for a study only in the city of Chicago, where SafeSpeed didn’t operate.
In recordings the jury will hear Thursday, Jones allegedly agreed to limit his legislation in exchange for the $5,000 and the job for his intern, according to the feds.
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