Businessman charged with bribing state workers to land $2.5M contract

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - A Hawaii businessman has been charged with bribing state employees and officials in the Federated States of Micronesia in order to receive multi-million dollar government contracts.

Frank James Lyon, of LYON Associates Inc. in Honolulu, allegedly bribed the Hawaii government workers with at least $240,000 in order to land a $2.5 million contract, according to a federal court filing.

Court documents say one of the employees — identified as co-conspirator 3 — was with a state agency from 2009 to 2012. The filing says the state worker arranged payments to others, including one on a contract selection panel.

Lyon, president of the civil engineering firm, is also accused of bribing Micronesian officials with at least $200,000 in order to get $7.8 million in contract payments.

He could not immediately be reached.

Federal officials did not say which department the co-conspirator 3 worked for. Hawaii News Now has reached out to the state for more information.

But the filings do say that about $132,000 was paid to a state employee “purportedly for marketing services."

“However, the purpose of the payments was for co-conspirator 3′s participation in influencing the award of a state agency contract in favor of engineering company,” the filing said.

LYON identifies itself as a “family-owned, multi-discipline consultancy," with work that includes infrastructure-improvement projects, roads and highways, utilities, institutional facilities and housing developments.

Its website spotlights a host of large Hawaii projects, along with projects across Asia and the Pacific.

This story will be updated.

Copyright 2019 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.