A San Francisco property management company and one of its top executives will pay $40,000 — the maximum allowed under state law — for laundering $4,000 in campaign contributions to Mayor Ed Lee and then-Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting during the 2011 mayor’s race.
The state Fair Political Practices Commission unanimously voted to impose the fine against Archway Property Services and the company’s managing director, Andrew Hawkins Cohen, a decision Cohen and his company did not contest. The FPPC launched its investigation after The Chronicle reported the alleged money laundering three years ago.
The FPPC found that Hawkins Cohen told the property firm’s president and six of its contractors and employees to make eight $500 contributions to Lee and Ting’s mayoral campaigns, then Archway reimbursed the individuals. By using the seven donors as “undisclosed intermediaries,” the commission wrote in its default decision, Cohen and the firm “were able to make contributions to candidates that were far greater than those allowed under local limits.”