Beaumont Corruption Case: Four Defendants due in Court Today,

Four former Beaumont officials charged in a conspiracy and embezzlement case are scheduled for a court hearing Tuesday, Dec. 19, two months after a fellow defendant pleaded guilty to a single felony conflict-of-interest charge

Beaumont’s former public works director Deepak Moorjani also agreed Oct. 20 to pay $3 million to settle his part in a separate civil suit seeking to recover $43 million in allegedly diverted transportation funds.

The Tuesday hearing is listed as a felony settlement conference for former Beaumont Planning Director Ernest Egger, ex-Economic Development Director David Dillon, former City Manager Alan Kapanicas and ex-Finance Director William Aylward.

Only former Beaumont City Attorney Joseph Aklufi remains on the court docket for a long-scheduled Feb. 22, 2018, preliminary hearing. The Riverside County District Attorney’s office declined to comment Monday.

Moorjani, like Egger and Dillon, was named as a defendant in the 2016 criminal case as well as the civil case filed in June by the Western Riverside Council of Governments.

That lawsuit seeks to recover money that WRCOG claimed the defendants illegally diverted from it between 2003 and 2009.

The $43 million was supposed to go to the joint power agency’s Transportation Uniform Mitigation Fee, which uses contributions from member cities for regional transportation projects to mitigate increased traffic from housing developments, the lawsuit said.

WRCOG contends the defendants used various ploys through a contracting company they had formed, Urban Logic Consultants, to block Beaumont’s payments to TUMF.

When Moorjani entered his plea in the criminal case, his agreement to pay $3 million in restitution to WRCOG resulted in him being dropped from the civil suit the same day.