Former head of DWP agrees to plead guilty to bribery charge

David H. Wright, shown in 2019, was general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Wright and Paradis “worked together to select the company’s name, ‘Aventador,’ which was the name of a model of the luxury car company Lamborghini,” according to the plea agreement. Wright worked with Paradis and an unnamed “senior executive of LADWP” to “draft and hone” the letter urging the the DWP Board of Commissioners to approve the contract, according to the agreement. In March 2019, during a meeting at his home, Wright told Paradis that he “feared that their relationship and their corrupt plans for Aventador would be discovered,” according to the agreement. Wright’s plea agreement also describes an encounter in April 2019 in a downtown cafe where Paradis left a paper bag with a “wiped phone and a burner phone” for Wright.