LAFAYETTE, La. (The Daily Advertiser) – Four years after being charged with violating Louisiana ethics laws, Lafayette businessman Greg Gachassin and his Cartesian Company have been found guilty and assessed the largest fine in state history, $1.56 million.
The three-judge Louisiana Ethics Adjudicatory Board released its decision Wednesday after weighing the evidence and arguments following a hearing in April. The Louisiana Board of Ethics originally charged Gachassin and the Cartesian Company in 2012.
The violations stem from Gachassin’s time serving as a volunteer on the Lafayette Public Trust Financing Authority board of trustees from Aug. 19, 2003, until he resigned Nov. 17, 2009. He was chairman from April 6, 2007, until his resignation.
The Ethics Adjudicatory Board wrote in its 44-page decision that Gachassin and Cartesian violated the state ethics code by contracting with an agency of the LPTFA while Gachassin was chairman of the LPTFA, a public trust whose beneficiary is the city of Lafayette.
Gachassin further violated the ethics code “when he participated in discussions and voted on matters before the LPTFA in which he had a personal substantial economic interest, according to the decision.
The board found that he also violated the ethics code when he was paid to assist the Cartesian Company in matters concerning the LPTFA within two years of resigning from the LPTFA. State ethics laws require a two-year waiting period before such action is allowed.
Gachassin and his company, the judges wrote, earned $1 million from deals brokered while violating the state ethics laws.
The panel did not find Gachassin and Cartesian guilty of several other ethics charges.
They have the right to appeal the decision.
The Daily Advertiser, in a January 2009 investigation, was first to report Gachassin’s involvement with the LPTFA at the same time he represented other agencies, including the embattled Lafayette Housing Authority, and corporations on local low income housing projects.
Here is an excerpt from that report:
On Nov. 1, 2009, Gachassin and former LHA Executive Director Walter Guillory signed a project consultant agreement for the Villa Gardens development. Under that agreement, Gachassin’s company is to be paid $500,000 over the course of the project.
When Gachassin signed that agreement in 2009, he was serving as chairman of the Lafayette Public Trust Financing Authority. That agency loaned the housing authority more than $400,000 for Villa Gardens in August 2006, while Gachassin was an LPTFA board member.
Gachassin resigned from the LPTFA effective Nov. 17, 2009, 17 days after signing on as project consultant for Villa Gardens, according to City-Parish government records.
