Dive Summary:
- A lawsuit filed jointly by Robert Pruim, Sr. and Robert Pruim, Jr. alleges that Alderman Richard Mell secretly held a one-third ownership of a Joliet, Illinois landfill.
- Alderman Mell is accused of using political connections to put a family member in place as the face of the landfill and used his aldermanic office to hold meetings about the landfill.
- The closing statement from the $17.7 million sale of the landfill, in 2008, lists no money being distributed to Mell, and shows a $9.5 million payment going to Landfill Reclamation Services.
From the article:
But the lawsuit filed by Robert Pruim Sr. and his son, Robert Jr., in Will County Circuit Court, accuses the powerful alderman of helping create the business, taking a one-third ownership stake and then conspiring to defraud the Pruims out of nearly $3.7 million when the sale occurred.
“Mell was … a powerful Chicago alderman who had extensive ties to the construction industry,” the Pruim lawsuit says. “He was also father-in-law of the governor of the state of Illinois, which was the largest dumper of clean waste.”
The 38-year alderman announced his retirement last week, and the deadline to apply to replace him was 5 p.m. Thursday. His daughter, state Rep. Deb Mell (D-Chicago), is the presumed front-runner.
