According to U.S. Attorney’s press release, an FBI investigating a has led to bribery and fraud charges against former Alabama House Member. 57-year-old Oliver Robinson, a Democrat from Birmingham, entered a plea agreement which includes his admission of guilt to the charges and his promise to “never again to seek elected office and pledges to pay restitution and forfeiture.”
The case was the result of a multi-agency investigation in which the lead investigators were Acting U.S. Attorney Robert O. Posey, FBI Special Agent in Charge Roger Stanton, and Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation, Acting Special Agent in Charge James E. Dorsey. They said the former Alabama lawmaker “accepted bribes from a Birmingham lawyer and an Alabama coal company executive in exchange for advocating their employers’ opposition to EPA actions in North Birmingham.”
The report goes on to explain that Posey received a “valuable contract between the Birmingham law firm Balch & Bingham and the Oliver Robinson Foundation to influence and reward Robinson for using his position as a member of the Alabama House of Representatives, vice-chairman of the Jefferson County Legislative Delegation, and an elected representative of citizens of Birmingham to pressure and advise public officials to oppose EPA’s prioritization and expansion of a North Birmingham EPA Superfund site.”
Posey said, “This case gets at the heart of public corruption in Alabama…Well-funded special interests offer irresistible inducements to public officials. In exchange, the officials represent the interests of those who pay rather than the interests of those who vote. Here a public official betrayed his community to advocate for those who polluted their neighborhoods.”
Stanton said, “As a result of Robinson’s greed, he sold his office and betrayed the public’s trust for personal gain…Robinson’s case is a prime example of why public corruption remains the FBI’s top criminal investigative priority, and why my office established a public corruption tip line.”
And Dorsey added, “Elected officials take an oath to serve the community. Instead of helping the community, Robinson was enriching himself at the expense of the taxpayers who elected him to serve. IRS Criminal Investigation is committed to tracing financial transactions to ensure that those who engage in these illegal activities are brought to justice.”
Mr. Robinson represented Alabama’s House District 58 from 1998 before resigning in the fall of 2016. The U.S. Attorney’s press release also said the charges include “fraud charges connected to campaign contributions and to contributions that Robinson solicited for events he sponsored. The final count in the information charges Robinson with tax evasion for the 2015 calendar year.”
The background of this story is that an area of North Birmingham that includes Harriman Park, Fairmont, and Collegeville, and that was later expanded to include Tarrant, and Inglenook was found to have high levels of pollution. These pollutants include arsenic, lead, and benzo(a)pyrene. As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designated this area as a Superfund site referred to as “35th Avenue Superfund Site.” The report says that in 2013, the EPA told five companies they could be responsible for this pollution, which could lead to “tens of millions of dollars in cleanup costs and fines. A year later, in the fall of 2014, the EPA added the 35th Avenue Superfund site to its National Priorities List.”
The U.S. Attorney’s media release says that the Birmingham law firm of Balch & Bingham represented Drummond and its subsidiary ABC Coke, which was one of the five companies the EPA named as having potential responsibility for the 35th Avenue Superfund site. A partner at the law firm helped coordinate ABC Coke’s response to the EPA. As part of that effort, the U.S. Attorneys say the lawyers and their client formed a tax-exempt corporation called “Alliance for Jobs and the Economy” to raise money to help fund their response to the EPA.
The report says their efforts included “working to prevent EPA from listing the 35th Avenue site on the National Priorities List and expanding the Superfund site into Tarrant and Inglenook.” The report continues, stating:
The plan included advising residents of North Birmingham and public officials to oppose EPA’s actions. As part of the overall strategy, Balch & Bingham paid Robinson, through his non-profit foundation, to represent Balch & Bingham’s and its clients’ interests, exclusively, in matters related to EPA’s actions in North Birmingham. Over the course of the contract in 2015 and 2016, Balch & Bingham paid $360,000 to the foundation.
In exchange for the payments, Robinson appeared before the Alabama Environmental Management Commission and said he was “really here today to try to protect the residents of north Birmingham.” He said, “[T]he thing that gets me and what is in the process of hurting the residents in that area is that the EPA has included five other corporations in on this process, but there have been no reports stating that these individuals are culpable in any way. And where that hurts the residents is the fact that we will have decades of litigation that will occur because of these five companies being added.”
In exchange for these payments, the report says Robinson asked the Alabama Environmental Management Commission (AEMC) “to help narrow the list of potentially responsible parties if there were no reports or tests implicating the corporations. Concluding, Robinson told the AEMC that if the areas of North Birmingham are designated as a Superfund site or listed on the NPL, the residents are ‘considered to live in a dump and nothing can happen there until it’s either cleaned up and after that, it will take tremendous investment to get it to move forward.’”
Additionally, the U.S. Attorney said “Fraud charges brought against Robinson outside of the bribery conspiracy include two counts of wire fraud for spending $17,783 of campaign contributions on personal items unrelated to his legislative campaigns. The final wire fraud count charges Robinson with soliciting money from corporations, representing he would use it to publish a magazine or to defray costs for an annual Partnering for Progress Business Conference or the annual Alabama Black Achievers Awards Gala, which the Oliver Robinson Foundation sponsored. Robinson spent at least $250,000 of those contributions on personal items unrelated to the magazine or the annual events, according to the charges.”
The press release concludes by stating the maximum penalty for conspiracy is five years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. The maximum penalty for bribery is 10 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. The maximum penalty for each count of wire fraud is 20 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. The maximum penalty for tax evasion is five years imprisonment and a $100,000 fine, together with the costs of prosecution.”
