CHICAGO — The owner of a Burger King in then-Alderman Edward Burke’s Southwest Side ward told a federal jury Tuesday he agreed to hire the powerful Democrat’s property tax law firm to get the alderman to lift roadblocks to remodeling his restaurant and also sent a political donation to support Burke’s candidate for mayor.
The long-awaited testimony of Shoukat Dhanani, CEO of the Texas-based company that owns about 150 Burger Kings in the Chicago area, struck at the heart 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. He took personal note of the status of construction at Burger King location on South Pulaski Road, passed out his law firm’s business card at a country club meeting with Dhanani, and told his longtime ward aide, Peter Andrews Jr., to play hardball and shut down the remodeling work when Dhanani initially failed to come through, according to trial testimony.
In December 2017, with the project still on hold, Dhanani testified he flew to Chicago to meet with Burke at the Union League Club in the Loop. It was there that he agreed to put Burke’s firm in touch with his property tax people in Houston, he said.
“My gut feeling was maybe since I had not responded about the property tax business, maybe that’s why we had been shut down,” Dhanani testified. “I didn’t see any other reason why it would be.”
In addition to being one of the four main schemes in the federal racketeering indictment, the Burger King episode also plays an inadvertent role in Chicago political history, as allegations that Burke pushed Dhanani to attend a fundraiser at his home for then-mayoral candidate Toni Preckwinkle altered the trajectory of the mayor’s race.
On Tuesday, the jury heard a secretly recorded phone call where Dhanani told Burke he couldn’t make it to the fundraiser after all due to bad weather in Houston, but that he’d already donated $10,000.
“Good, well I wanted you to meet some of the people that are going to be there because, you know, there’s some of the movers and shakers here that I think you should start to become acquainted with,” Burke said in the Jan. 18, 2018, call. “But we’ll do it another time.”
Burke’s lawyers, meanwhile, have contended the alderman was well within the law in pitching his law firm in meetings, and never tied it to any official action.
In his cross-examination of Dhanani on Tuesday afternoon, defense attorney Joseph Duffy attempted to portray him as a sophisticated, self-made business tycoon and likely billionaire, not some rube who could be easily shaken down by a provincial Chicago alderman.
Dhanani agreed with Duffy that he was someone “always looking for more opportunities” to expand and make more money. Duffy suggested Dhanani knew Burke was a powerful elected official and he took steps to cozy up to him, not the other way around.
“You wanted to meet him, right?” Duffy asked.
“Yes,” Dhanani said.
In the end, Dhanani agreed that his company never actually hired Burke’s law firm, and that the remodeling of the Burger King was successfully completed without any more interference from Burke.
Cross-examination of Dhanani is expected to continue Wednesday.
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.
Dhanani, 70, of the Houston suburb of Sugar Land, took the stand in an understated brown shirt and glasses, looking far more casual than Burke, who watched the testimony from the defense table in a dark suit, bright green tie and pocket square.
An immigrant from Pakistan, Dhanani testified he came to the U.S. as a teen in 1976 and bought a gas station with his brother while he was still earning his associate degree. From there they expanded to convenience stores and fuel supply.
In 2014, his Dhanani Group Inc. purchased about 150 mostly dilapidated Burger Kings in the Chicago area with a plan to renovate them, he said. Among them was the restaurant in the 14th Ward at 4060 S. Pulaski Road.
Dhanani testified he first reached out to Burke in 2017 because Burke was a powerful aldermen and he needed to discuss issues surrounding their plan to remodel the restaurant.
Unbeknownst to Dhanani, at the time the meeting was being arranged, Burke was also looking into who did his company’s tax appeal work. On June 8, 2017, Burke called an aide and asked her to check who was doing real estate tax work on behalf of Dhanani Group.
“I want somebody at the law office to check to see who’s filed with the assessor of the board on that one,” Burke said on the call, which was played in court Tuesday.
Three days later, Burke talked to political friend Rodney Ellis, a county commissioner in Texas, about Dhanani. “I’ll let him know how important you are,” Ellis told Burke on the call.
“Well, you’re good to do that, but I’d also like to get some of his law business,” Burke responded. “I hear he’s got 300 Burger Kings here.”
Dhanani first spoke to Burke directly on May 25, 2017. After Burke told Dhanani the “sun’s starting to come out in Chicago,” Dhanani said he’d heard the alderman had concerns over truck parking overnight at the Burger King.
“Yeah, that’s been an ongoing problem there,” Burke said. “Some of the community activists are giving me a little aggravation about it.”
Two weeks later, Burke called his assistant to set up their meeting. In addition to asking who did the company’s taxes, Burke told his aide to make sure to find out if the Dhananis are Muslim and have any dietary restrictions, such as no pork.
Burke’s aide said the Polish Highlanders restaurant on South Archer Avenue was having its annual shredding event that day.
“I don’t know if these folks are gonna be impressed with the Shred-a-thon and Polish sausage,” Burke said on the call.
In June 2017, Burke met with Dhanani and Dhanani’s son, Zohaib, at the Burger King site, a meeting that was under surveillance by the FBI. The jury was shown photos of Burke, dressed in a dark suit, striding among the semitrucks parked in the lot and then sitting at a plastic table inside the Burger King with the Dhananis talking about the remodel.
Dhanani said they later went with Burke to the Beverly Country Club, where Burke bought them lunch and first began pitching his law business.
“One thing that he had mentioned during lunch was he has his law firm that fights for the property taxes to keep them low and that he has that law firm that does that here in Chicago,” Dhanani testified.
According to Dhanani’s account, Burke “said in general he’s been very successful” at property tax work, including “getting some high-profile individuals property taxes reduced, I guess in millions.”
Dhanani said he told Burke he’d look into hiring his firm and get back to him. But that didn’t happen immediately. On Aug. 2, 2017, almost two months after the meeting with Dhanani, Burke asked Andrews in a recorded call, “Have we heard any more from those Burger King people on Pulaski?”
“No, not a word,” Andrews replied.
Two months after that, Burke called Andrews to tell him he just drove past the Burger King and “there appears to be remodeling work going on there.”
“What was the issue? Why was I able to hold it up? What did they need from me?” Burke asked on the call. Andrews said it was driveway permits.
“They appear to be operating the drive-thru,” Burke said in an irritated tone. “So maybe they’re remodeling the inside for the people that are going to eat in, but it looks like cars are moving through there and picking up their orders.”
About 90 minutes after Burke called Andrews, Dhanani got an email from his son notifying them Andrews had ordered them to shut down the remodeling project because Burke’s office had never “signed off on the plans.”
The next day, Andrews confirmed in a call with Burke that he’d shut the work down, and asked whether Dhanani ever hired Burke’s law firm.
“Never,” Burke said. “Never. I took ’em to lunch. I was playing nice with ’em. Never got back.”
Andrews replied he’d play as “hardball as I can.”
That led to the December 2017 meeting at the Union League Club, where Burke again brought up hiring his law firm. After that meeting, the ball started rolling on hiring Klafter & Burke, with Burke’s assistant at his City Council office, Meaghan Synowiecki, emailing the Dhanani Group saying information on tax appeal work could be sent directly to Burke’s personal AOL account.
On Dec. 18, 2017, the person who handled tax business with Dhanani Group emailed Burke’s assistant with the terms: They would hire Klafter & Burke to do tax appeals at all Illinois locations for a “performance-based fee of 25% of the tax savings.”
But later, Dhanani moved to trim that business to just 20 locations after his associate had expressed reservations about Klafter & Burke seeming “disorganized.”
In the end, Dhanani never paid Klafter & Burke for any work at all.
Dhanani getting more involved in Chicago politics, as urged by Burke, also never materialized.
Election records show Dhanani indeed tried to send Preckwinkle, the Cook County Board president, a $10,000 check in January 2019, but it was over the individual contribution limit of $5,600 and had been preliminarily rejected by the Preckwinkle campaign.
Still, the issue erupted in the middle of the 2019 mayor’s race after Burke was first charged with extorting the Burger King owners. Preckwinkle’s campaign officially reported returning the entire amount of Dhanani’s donation and had to amend her campaign finance reports.
Preckwinkle never recovered, losing all 50 wards to Lori Lightfoot in a runoff election later that year.
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