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Ex-LAUSD Official Pleads Guilty To Conflict-Of-Interest Charge

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — A 53-year-old man pleaded guilty Thursday to a conflict-of-interest charge for hiring people he employed in his own business to work for the Los Angeles Unified School District, where he was a regional construction director.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Craig Veals ordered Bassam Raslan to pay $250,000 in restitution to the school district and to serve five years on probation and complete 200 hours of community service, according to the District Attorney's Office.

Raslan was charged March 30 in a grand jury indictment accusing him of creating with two others "a corporation to profit from the hiring of construction management personnel" and recommending that the district hire his own employees without notifying his supervisors of the conflict between February 2004 and February 2007.

Raslan's business partner at the time, Ivan Kesian, had been fired from the school district in August 2003 for conflict of interest, according to the indictment.

Following the indictment, the Los Angeles Unified School District said Raslan had been "placed on an unpaid leave of absence in order to minimize disruption to LAUSD's New School Construction and Modernization Program."

Raslan never returned to the position, which has been closed, according to an LAUSD spokeswoman.

(©2010 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)

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