Burger King tycoon recounts morning FBI showed up at his Texas doorstep with questions about Ald. Ed Burke: ‘I was relieved when they said I’m not in trouble’
On the morning the FBI raided then-Ald. Edward Burke’s City Hall offices in November 2018, four federal agents more than a thousand miles away descended on the home of Houston-area fast food restaurant tycoon Shoukat Dhanani.
When Dhanani answered his door that day in Sugar Land, Texas, the agents immediately assured him he was not in any trouble, but said they were investigating Burke and needed to ask him some questions about a Burger King that Dhanani had purchased and renovated in the 14th Ward, Dhanani told a federal jury in Chicago on Wednesday.
After Dhanani invited the agents into his dining room, they showed him photographs of Burke and his longtime ward aide, Peter Andrews Jr., and played him a selection of wiretapped recordings made in the case, according to the testimony.
They also asked about a meeting Dhanani had with Burke at the Beverly Country Club over the summer, he testified, and why he felt Burke had tried to push him to hire his private law firm for property tax appeals.
“What I think I may have said (to the agents) was ... It was my understanding that I would have to give the alderman the property tax business in order for us to get our permit or get going,” Dhanani testified.
Dhanani’s turn as one of the key witnesses in Burke’s historic corruption trial came nearly five years to the day after he was questioned by the FBI at his home.
When he was asked Wednesday about his mood the day the agents came to his door, Dhanani paused and said, “Well I was relieved when they got to the house and they said I’m not in trouble.”
Then he added, “Otherwise I wouldn’t have let them in,” prompting spectators and some jurors to break into laughter.
The testimony by Dhanani, CEO of the Texas-based company that owns about 150 Burger Kings in the Chicago area, is one of the centerpieces of the corruption allegations against Burke, who is accused of using his official position to extract private legal business from developers.
Through Dhanani’s account, as well as in emails and wiretapped calls, prosecutors painted a picture of Burke actively on the prowl, openly pitching his firm, Klafter & Burke, while wining and dining Dhanani, and sending Andrews to play hardball and shut down the remodeling work when Dhanani initially failed to come through.
But attorneys for Burke and Andrews have tried to flip the script in cross-examination, painting Dhanani as a savvy, self-made businessman who was making an effort to ingratiate himself with Burke as he tried to expand his footprint in Chicago.
Burke’s attorney, Joseph Duffy, also repeatedly pointed out that Dhanani never actually gave Burke any legal business, and the renovation of the Burger King on South Pulaski Road eventually was completed without any more interference from Burke.
On Wednesday, Duffy drilled down on Dhanani’s testimony on direct examination that he had a “gut feeling” that the reason for the work stoppage at the Burger King was because he hadn’t hired Burke’s firm. Duffy suggested Dhanani’s intuition was flat-out wrong.
“Nobody called you and told you that the job was being stopped because you had not provided work, did they?” Duffy asked, to which Dhanani replied, “No.”
Dhanani agreed with Duffy that Burke had been cordial in all of their phone conversations and meetings, including a December 2017 repast at the stately Union League Club on West Jackson Boulevard, where his son, Zohaib Dhanani, was so impressed he asked about becoming a member.
When Shoukat Dhanani was asked if he recalled his son saying after the meeting that Burke was a “gracious host” and he wanted to buy him a “nice bottle of rum,” Dhanani was initially foggy, but eventually said, “Mmm, kind of rings a bell, yes.”
Duffy also attempted to put a different spin on Burke’s request that Dhanani attend a January 2018 fundraiser at his home for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who at the time was considered a front-runner in the race to replace outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Prosecutors painted the episode as another example of Burke as an old-school politician getting someone with business at City Hall to do his bidding.
Under questioning by Duffy, however, Dhanani agreed that he wanted to attend the fundraiser because he was interested in rubbing elbows with some of Chicago’s movers and shakers. At the time, his interest had also been piqued by Burke’s mention of a lucrative opportunity to open up Burger Kings at Midway Airport.
Duffy replayed for the jury the January 2018 call where Dhanani told Burke he couldn’t make it to the fundraiser due to bad weather in Houston. After Burke said they’d do it some other time, Dhanani abruptly brought up the Midway Airport proposal.
“What do we need to do, or should we do to get started to see if we can get in (to Midway) with the Burger Kings?” he said.
Seemingly caught off guard, Burke replied , “I can’t um, I can’t, uh, talk, uh, now with you, I’m in a situation.”
Burke said they could talk about the deal next week. But Dhanani confirmed when asked by Duffy that Burke never got back to him, and the proposal died on the vine.
On redirect, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker hit back at the notion that Burke was the one being played.
“Had you ever had a public official who had authority over the area where your restaurant was located take you to lunch?” Streicker asked. “No, I don’t think so,” Dhanani said quietly.
“Ever had a public official ask you to hire his private business after you sought approval for a permit?” Streicker said.
“No,” Dhanani testified.
Burke, 79, who left the City Council in May, is charged with 14 counts including racketeering, federal program bribery, attempted extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion and using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity.
Andrews, 73, is charged with one count of attempted extortion, one count of conspiracy to commit extortion, two counts of using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity and one count of making a false statement to the FBI.
A third defendant, real estate developer Charles Cui, was not charged as part of the Burger King scheme.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall ended testimony early on Wednesday due to the Thanksgiving holiday. The trial is scheduled to resume Monday.
In his questioning of Dhanani on Wednesday, attorney Todd Pugh, who represents Andrews, pointed out that Dhanani had no idea who Andrews was when he first came to Chicago to meet Burke in June 2016.
Even after dealing with Andrews over the permit squabble, Dhanani struggled to remember him. In fact, when the FBI showed him a photo of Andrews at his home in 2018, he said he didn’t recognize him.
Pugh repeatedly referred to Dhanani’s two meetings with Burke as “the private club discussions,” stressing that Andrews was not there and what was said was between Dhanani and Burke.
He also spent a large portion of his cross-examination on whether Dhanani realized that under Chicago ordinances, his Burger King had failed to secure the driveway permits they needed to begin renovation, as Burke and Andrews suggested in their meeting.
He showed Dhanani stamped documents showing that his company wound up filing three applications for driveway permits on Nov, 14, 2017, more than five months after Burke first raised the issue.
Dhanani testified he stayed out of the day-to-day details of the renovations and that to this day, he’s still unsure whether driveway permits were needed. “That’s not how we do it in Texas anyway,” he said.
“In your mind you believed, your words not mine, ‘Driveway permits were BS,’ right?” Pugh asked.
“Yes,” Dhanani said.
