A leading San Jose City Council candidate worked for a Chinese billionaire arrested on bribery and corruption charges, mostly by helping the embattled CEO’s company sell land from his failed Bay Area developments.
San Jose Planning Commissioner George Casey, who is caught in a heated race to replace District 10 Councilman Arjun Batra, advised a company owned by Zhang Li, former co-chairman and CEO of Chinese developer Guangzhou R&F Properties. Its U.S. subsidiary, Z&L Properties Inc., developed a number of controversial projects in the South Bay including “Slave Towers” — the site of the city’s largest labor trafficking project that housed undocumented workers in shipping containers and forced them to work for free.
Casey worked for Z&L Properties between June 2021 and December 2022, he confirmed to San José Spotlight. He said his role as a senior development manager involved helping Li sell his properties to other developers. Casey, a corporate attorney and real estate broker, maintains he joined Z&L after Li admitted to bribing San Francisco officials between 2015 and 2020, and that his role was to help Z&L exit the San Jose market.
“I feel like helping this company get out of San Jose and transfer these properties to a developer who can turn them into housing and create high-wage jobs was a good thing,” Casey told San José Spotlight. “That was my focus.”
Li was detained in London in November 2022, the same year Casey worked for the development firm, for plying former San Francisco Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru with wine, lavish trips, expensive meals and gifts to speed up a stalled project in the city. He pleaded guilty to bribery a year later and agreed to pay a $50,000 fee before returning to China. His company was fined $1 million.
The real estate mogul’s arrest left a trail of unfinished projects across the Bay Area, turning into eyesores that attracted pests.
The company has faced a series of delays and challenges in developing its San Jose projects over the years, including 700 homes planned at the former Greyhound bus station site at 70 S. Almaden Ave. in downtown San Jose, and 221 homes planned at 252 N. First St.
The Chinese developer’s most controversial project in the South Bay was Silvery Towers. In 2015, Z&L bought the rights to develop 650 apartments in twin skyscrapers, a potential economic engine for downtown. But in 2017, federal authorities arrested a subcontractor on the project, Job Torres Hernandez, for recruiting workers from an ad in a Tijuana newspaper promising fair wages and legal status in the U.S. Once the workers arrived in Hayward, they were held in squalid quarters, denied compensation, and threatened with violence by drug cartels if they spoke out.
Casey does not list Z&L on his LinkedIn and some are wondering why he would work for a company linked to multiple scandals.
“As a business person, you make moral and business judgments about who you decide to do business with and it’s not like you’re someone who didn’t have the information in front of you to understand who Z&L was,” Bob Staedler, a developer and land use consultant, told San José Spotlight. “You’d have to question his judgment and how he would use it to benefit his constituents for the city of San Jose.”
The shadow of Z&L
Z&L became the catalyst for a citywide movement to address wage theft, prompting San Jose City Council members to tighten worker protections.
Casey said the city’s wage theft policies are “adequate as written, but clearly need vigorous enforcement.” Meanwhile, he said his stance is more complex regarding the city’s efforts to waive development fees on downtown high-rises.
“We have tens of thousands of permitted units that are not being built because they are not ‘flagged.’ We need to look at these properties on a case-by-case basis and make sure we balance the need for fees to fund services with the vital need for more housing. It really shouldn’t be one size fits all,” Casey said.
Z&L’s abandoned properties also prompted a city effort to get rid of blight.
Another abandoned Z&L project that has fallen into disrepair is the First Church of Christ Scientist building. The building has been vacant for several decades and Z&L has owned the property since 2017 with plans to renovate the church and build more than 200 homes. However, for much of that time it has been covered in tarps and scaffolding and nicknamed the “Trash Bag” church.
The church is among a series of trouble spots that have prompted calls from Mayor Matt Mahan and Councilman Omar Torres to increase fines for abandoned properties and study blight.
The exterior of the west side of the former First Church of Christ, Scientist building in San Jose is seen on Jan. 18, 2024. File photo.
In the District 10 race, Casey received a powerful endorsement from Mahan. The mayor defended Casey’s work with the controversial developer.
“My understanding is that George Casey helped with Z&L for one simple reason: to get them as far away from San Jose as possible,” Mahan told San José Spotlight. “Starting in 2021, he worked to take the land off their hands and into the hands of people who would use it for what our residents desperately need: more jobs and housing, which is exactly what city staff was working on in parallel.”
The San Jose Police Officers Association has backed both Casey and Batra. Police union spokesman Tom Saggau became one of the most vocal critics of Z&L’s “Slavery Towers” project between 2017 and 2018. Saggau helped turn the scandal into a flashpoint in a debate over working conditions and worker protections. Hundreds of union protesters organized against Z&L.
Saggau declined to comment on Casey’s previous employment at Z&L.
Ruth Silver Taube, a labor and employment attorney and San José Spotlight columnist, called it “troubling” that Casey has such connections.
“The City Council has been at the forefront of enacting wage theft legislation and has a zero-tolerance policy for businesses when it comes to human trafficking, particularly labor trafficking,” she told San José Spotlight.
Impartial or not?
Today, Casey works as a senior advisor and vice president at a real estate technology startup called Unlock Technologies. The company’s website says it buys housing properties from people with bad credit to help them pay off their debts, having them sign agreements that they will have to pay off in 5 to 10 years. Sell your houses or buy Unlock’s share.
“Every mortgage in America carries the risk that someone will default and lose their home,” Casey told San José Spotlight. “What we’re doing is helping working families who are underserved by big Wall Street lenders build credit so they can improve their financial situation. It’s really a mystery to me why anyone would want to be against helping people who want to improve their financial situation.”
Silvery Towers, the embattled project at the center of a labor trafficking and wage theft scandal, was among the first to receive a waiver on fees related to the construction of downtown skyscrapers, part of a yearlong effort to encourage more housing construction and turn downtown into a thriving urban hub.
San Jose City Council members in June extended fee waivers for downtown high-rises for the next seven years.
“If he is elected, he will obviously be a decision-maker who will be able to make these kinds of decisions. It could be concerning for us,” said Will Smith, a business agent with the San Jose chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, who was one of the loudest protesters at the workplace.
Casey said his work with Z&L will not prevent him from holding developers accountable for theft and wage ruin.
“I am proud of the positive impact this work has had on our community,” he said.
Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X, formerly known as Twitter.
