Exclusive: City documents show E.R. Mitchell made millions with city

City of Atlanta minority certification applications, obtained by the FOX 5 I-Team, give us the first glimpse of what kind of work E.R. Mitchell Jr. did with the city and who he worked with.

Mitchell recently pled guilty in federal court to conspiracy to bribe someone to secure city construction contracts. The US Attorney, John Horn, says E.R. Mitchell and another unnamed “person in the construction industry” paid bribes for construction city contracts. Those bribes, paid between 2010 and 2015, totaled more than one million dollars according to assistant US Attorney Jeffrey Davis.

We examined two years’ worth of minority certification documents submitted by Mitchell to the city between 2013 and 2015 as he sought approval to be a part of the city’s minority vendor program.

Company records show the city of Atlanta awarded Mitchell’s company, Cascade Building Systems, an emergency snow removal contract and a bridge erosion control contracts. No date of the award is given on the application.

On one page, the city asked for a list of all the prime contractors Mitchell worked with. Mitchell only listed one prime contractor: C.P. Richards, a construction firm out of DeKalb County.

According to the Contract Compliance office, Cascade Building Systems, was a 32% minority contractor on at least two Streetscape projects awarded to C.P. Richards.  One project involved the installation of light posts, sidewalks, and benches along Headland Drive.

How much did Cascade Building Systems make?  On one company resume it reads that Cascade Building Systems provided "over 1.5 million of subcontractor services" on Streetscape Construction.

Other documents in the file listed Mitchell’s "Ongoing jobs” at the city during two different application processes. Those contract amounts totaled nearly 8 million dollars.

We tried to talk with C.P. Richards company owner, Charles Richards.  A secretary at his office gave us the phone number for his lawyer, Lynne Borsak. She's listed as a criminal defense and white collar attorney. She was out of town when we called.

Neither the FBI nor US Attorney would comment on whether Richards' played any role in the E.R Mitchell investigation.

The city attorney, reversing an earlier decision, has promised to release as many as 1.3 million city documents on file, relating to E.R. Mitchell’s work at City Hall.