PHILADELPHIA — A contractor on the project to restore Amtrak’s 30th Street Station in Philadelphia is facing a federal bribery charge after allegedly providing more than $300,000 in gifts and favors for an Amtrak employee, who altered a contract to nearly double the value of the contractor’s contract, KYW Radio reports.
A court document says Khalid Dallo is facing one count of conspiracy to commit federal program bribery relating to a $58.5 million contract awarded in 2015 to be the main contractor on the façade repair and restoration of the station. Between 2016 and 2019, Dallo allegedly provided the Amtrak employee, not identified in the document, trips to Ecuador and India, a watch valued at more than $11,000 limousine rentals, meals, entertainment, gift cards, and other items. In turn, the Amtrak employee approved change orders on five occasions that added more than $52 million to the value of the contract.
A 2021 Chicago Tribune story identified the company involved as Mark 1 Restoration of Dolton, Ill., and the Amtrak official as Ajith Bhaskaran. A company spokesman told the Tribune at that time that the company “has been providing extensive and extraordinary cooperation to the government investigation,” and that the company had completed its work on the station project in 2020. Bhaskaran died, apparently of natural causes, while awaiting trial for a separate case in which he allegedly defrauded the Social Security program out of $250,000.
The 30th Street Station project, originally budgeted at $60 million, eventually saw the cost soar to $109 million, but Bhaskaran told Philadelphia public broadcaster WHYY the increase was deliberate: “We added a lot of additional work, in terms of blast-film and additional limestone replacement, because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to this work. And those decisions were taken at the highest level.”
The website Court Watch says the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Philadelphia declined comment and efforts to reach Dallo were unsuccessful.
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