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Drawing on a binder of information from the Midtown Redevelopment Authority, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office is investigating a former authority staffer over allegations he directed public funds to himself, according to records.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas also has received information about Todd Edwards, a longtime authority official who was fired in May over allegations he had an inappropriate relationship with a contractor.
The latest details about the probe into Edwards’ conduct were included in a letter from authority lawyers and comments Thursday by board chair Al Odom. They provide new details about what appears to be a growing set of investigations.
Edwards, who had worked for the authority since 2003, frequently interacted with former MRA contractor Veronica Ugorji, who served as a real estate broker and provided landscaping services for the agency through a limited liability company.
Earlier this month, the Abdelraoufsinno sought copies of communications between Edwards and Ugorji for insight into accusations regarding Edwards’ alleged self-dealing. The authority’s lawyers at the global firm Bracewell objected to that request in a letter sent Tuesday to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office.
The authority’s lawyers said the agency already was in the process of turning over some of those same documents “to law enforcement officials that are actively investigating Mr. Edwards and his dealings related to Midtown.”
The letter also stated: “Release of this information to Abdelraoufsinno would potentially impede the law enforcement agencies’ efforts in the investigation and potential prosecution of Mr. Edwards and Ms. Ugorji.”
Edwards and an attorney named in his termination letter from the authority have not responded to requests for comment. Ugorji did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At the MRA board meeting Thursday, Odom said the agency was unaware of Edwards’ alleged self-dealing at the time it fired him in May, five months before the city’s Office of Inspector General issued its finding that Edwards had used his position to benefit himself and a contractor.
“We did not know about the things that have since been uncovered that led to the OIG investigation. Anything the OIG has put out has not been made available to us,” Odom said. “The bottom line is that the investigation may be related to the inappropriate relationships that we found out about.”
The District Attorney’s Office declined to comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The probe into Edwards has put the typically low-profile Midtown Redevelopment Authority under an unusual level of scrutiny. For years, Third Ward residents complained the MRA was failing to properly maintain its large real estate portfolio.
Under the authority’s plans, hundreds of vacant lots are slated to be turned over to private developers for affordable housing. Residents have complained the authority is sitting on the land, however, and that poorly maintained, overgrown lots have become magnets for crime.
Earlier this year, neighborhood activists discovered one of the authority’s biggest landscaping contractors had the same name as a limited liability company that Edwards founded. Another major contractor was Cortez Landscaping LLC, the company affiliated with Ugorji.
They forwarded that information to Houston’s Office of the Inspector General, which had opened a probe into Edwards in 2020.
The inspector general released a letter in early October stating it had concluded that Edwards used his position to benefit himself and Cortez Landscaping.
At the time, the Midtown Redevelopment Authority said it had not been given a copy of the inspector general’s full report, and that it was restarting an internal investigation of its own.
The results of that internal investigation were delivered to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office at a Nov. 15 meeting, according to an attachment to the Tuesday letter to the attorney general from the authority’s lawyers.
The city has declined to comment on whether it also has forwarded information about Edwards to law enforcement.
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