On September 25, 2013, OIG sent the Mayor’s Office an advisory regarding the duty of City vendors to report corruption or other unlawful conduct. OIG established that an employee of a subcontractor to a City vendor unlawfully solicited and received money from members of the public with promises to take official City action on their behalf. The investigation revealed that,
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- The subcontractor had terminated the employee and required him to repay money after the vendor received a complaint about the action described above. This occurred prior to OIG’s investigation.
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- Neither the vendor nor the subcontractor informed the City about this incident. The City learned of the incident only after a different member of the public filed a complaint with the City about a separate incident involving the employee in question.
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Current vendor contracts require cooperation with OIG in investigative matters. However, unlike City employees, vendors are not expressly required to report unlawful activity committed by employees connected to performance of the City contract. As it stands, the City is robbed of the opportunity to identify and address potential risk areas as represented by the employee in question. Agreeing with the OIG’s advisory, the Law Department, Department of Procurement Services, and others are working on new provisional language for city contracts as well as amendments to the Chicago Municipal Code. The proposed changes would make the duty to report a mandatory contractual obligation. The OIG Advisory can be downloaded via the links on the right.