Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has again raided the private sector for an agency head: Bryan D. Sivak, 34, is his new chief technology officer.

Sivak replaces interim CTO Chris Willey, who in turn replaced Vivek Kundra, who exited the Fenty administration for a top federal job in the Office of Management and Budget.

Like transportation director Gabe Klein, Sivak is coming from well outside the governmental sphere. He is a founder of software firm InQuira---an Silicon Valley outfit that has done projects for the like of Nokia, T-Mobile, and the British Ministry of Defense. This will be Sivak's first stint living in the District.

"I'm more of an innovator than anything else," he said at a One Judiciary Square press conference this morning.

LL is hearing word that the city today is moving to end contracts with Advanced Integrated Technology Corp.---the outfit until recently headed by Sushil Bansal, charged last week in the tech corruption scandal---and two other companies alleged to be associated with the fraud. LL has no confirmation of the companies' identities, but Innovative IT Solutions Inc. and Circle Networks were both named in a federal affidavit supporting last week's arrests.

AITC has garnered $13 million in city contracts since 2004, LL reported Friday. Between 20 and 30 employees of the three contractors will be affected, LL understands.

More to come.

UPDATE, 1:30 P.M.: Shahwanaz Samdar, an executive at AITC, says he's unaware of any developments. "We haven't heard anything. It's business as normal here."

UPDATE, 1:40 P.M.: WaPo confirms that Circle and Innovative are the two other companies; David Nakamura and Elissa Silverman also peg the number of affected employees at 23.

As LL has said repeatedly, there is not evidence that former Chief Technology Officer Vivek Kundra was in any way directly involved in the graft that allegedly happened under his nose. But it did happen under his nose.

So here's a question: Where was the oversight?

Kundra gave assurances that he was directly involved in the approval of procurements---ostensibly including the Acar's alleged falsified procurements. These assurances came in a December 2007 D.C. Council hearing held in the aftermath of the Office of Tax and Revenue scam. According to a D.C. Council committee report, "Mr. Kundra testified that his staff meets weekly to approve all procurements, regardless of size, with all relevant parties including the Program Management Officer, procurement and finance groups."

Here's another question: Did Kundra's initiatives lessen the opportunity for oversight? One of Kundra's pet projects was something called the IT Staff Augmentation Contract, where an outfit called OST Global was hired last August on a $75 million contract to quickly hire tech staff to do various jobs for OCTO.

Read More "What Vivek Kundra Has to Answer For" »

LL's spent the last couple of hours poring though the affidavit filed by federal authorities in support of the arrests made today in connection with OCTO corruption.

Here's the headlines:

• The whole scheme was laid bare thanks to the cooperation of an OCTO employee who was introduced into the scheme last March by Yusuf Acar. The employee went to the FBI in August.
• The dollar amount stolen is uncertain, but a company established to collect Acar's illicit earnings took in almost $300,000. The affidavit highlights suspicious transactions totaling over $600,000.
• Acar said in a taped phone call he was prepared to leave for Turkey and intimated he was stashing money for that possibility.
• Several other unnamed current or former OCTO employees are implicated in the scheme in various ways. Two of them have connections to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer---home of the $50M tax scandal uncovered in 2007.
• The scheme took two forms: ghost payrolling and inflated purchase orders.
• Acar had tapped into District e-mail systems and was intercepting e-mail traffic to and from the Office of the Inspector General in order to monitor whether they had gotten wind of his schemes.

Still want more? You could read the whole thing [PDF] or you could just read these highlights:

Read More "LL Breaks Down the OCTO Allegations" »

LL's been eyeballing city purchase orders this afternoon, trying to suss out some more information about Sushil Bansal (pictured), arrested in connection to the OCTO corruption probe, and his company, Advanced Integrated Technologies Corp. (AITC).

Long story short, they've done a lot of business with the city.

According to publicly downloadable city records---thanks, Vivek!---the city has authorized more than 160 payments to AITC since 2004 totaling over $13 million. That's quite a bit more city business than the $350,000 reported by WTOP earlier.

Read More "City Authorized $13M in Payments to Charged Contractor" »

Per WTOP's Mark Segraves and his Twitter feed, FBI agents are searching the Office of the Chief Technology Officer's executive suite located at One Judiciary Square. It's unclear at this point which particular office or which particular OCTO employee the feds might be targeting.

All of the OCTO employees on the premises have been sent home. "Administrative leave," is what LL is told.

CTO Vivek Kundra, you might remember, was recently tapped by Barack Obama for a high federal post. There is no indication that he or anyone particular person is under investigation.

UPDATE, 10:50 A.M.: Says a spokesperson for the FBI's Washington field office: "It's an ongoing investigation...I can't confirm anything at this time."

UPDATE, 11:15 A.M.: Segraves is reporting an arrest: "Yusuf Acar, 40, was taken into custody this morning by FBI agents at his home in Northwest Washington" in connection with a "federal bribery sting."

UPDATE, 11:30 A.M.: WaPo has a brief item up: "Acar serves as an information systems security officer in the D.C. government." No comment from U.S. Attorney, mayor.

Agency source tells LL, "Somebody like him has access to a whole bunch of shit."

This morning, OCTO personnel were told by acting CTO Tommy Jones not to access office computer systems, lest they engage in obstruction of justice.

UPDATE, 11:45 A.M.: Segraves is reporting a second arrest: Sushil Bansal.

Acar had been listed on numerous city contract proposals as "contracting officer's technical representative," indicating a central role in the OCTO contracting process.

UPDATE, 11:50 A.M.: D.C. Wire found a video of Acar:

Read More "Breaking: FBI Raids OCTO Offices" »

They call it "burrowing in"---when government employees in politically appointed posts move into civil-service jobs as political fortunes shift.

That's what a lot folks working for Republicans are doing right now in the federal government. And, at the District level, there's some burrowing, too.

Nyasha Smith, who clerked the workforce development and government operations committee for outgoing At-Large Councilmember Carol Schwartz, has started a new job at the Office of the Chief Technology Officer. She's now chief of staff to agency head Vivek Kundra.

OCTO, along with five zillion other District organs, used to be under Smith's purview as committee clerk. Before working for Schwartz, Smith did a stint as legislative counsel on Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry's staff. (This is neither here nor there, but Smith's move would certainly be felicitous should Barry take a portion of Schwartz' committee portfolio, as LL has speculated he will.)

Smith did not immediately return a call for comment. LL sends out a friendly note to you HR types: If you're in need of a devoted public servant or two, give Carol's office a call---724-8105!