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Witness says she sent
By Gordon Y.K. Pang
letter warning of
possible fraud
Star-BulletinA former city housing official has testified that she sent an anonymous letter to Councilman Duke Bainum telling him to look into potential fraud involving commercial relocation money at Ewa Villages.
Ex-housing specialist Pat Tompkins told Bainum he was looking at the wrong part of the project when he inquired in spring 1997 about residential relocation money. That wasn't where the problems were, she said.
"I felt the official responses of the city were not addressing the problem," said Pat Tompkins, who has been an elderly affairs planner in city Department of Community Services since the Housing Department was dissolved in 1998.
In earlier testimony, Bainum said he was stunned when he finally asked for information on commercial relocations, but was told by the administration that the information would be given only on a "need-to-know basis."
Tompkins appeared in Circuit Court yesterday as a witness for defendant Michael Kahapea in the Ewa Villages theft trial, which completed its sixth week.
The trial centers around fired housing official Michael Kahapea. He is accused of masterminding a scheme that robbed the Ewa Villages relocation fund of $5.8 million, shifting monies into the accounts of friends and relatives for work either not done or done at inflated costs.
Donald Wilkerson, Kahapea's attorney, appears to be seeking information that higher-ups either knew, or should have known, that there were irregularities when the relocation fund went from $1 million to $6 million from 1993 to 1997.
Also yesterday, former Managing Director Bob Fishman denied having told police Detective Dan Hanagami that it was common knowledge at City Hall that relocation funds were being diverted to cleanup costs at Ewa Villages.
Wilkerson is arguing that money from the fund was diverted to cleanup work under instruction from higher-ups.
Fishman, now chief executive office of the Hawaii Tourism Authority, also testified that he may have heard Harris instruct a Cabinet member to "get it done" as a show of disappointment over the lack of progress on a project. But he said it would be wrong to say the administration encouraged illegal activity to achieve its ends.
