“CONFIDENTIAL,” the tantalizing document begins. “ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGED ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT…. INVESTIGATION REPORT OF FINDINGS.”

The independent probe the city of Anaheim commissioned into rot in its ranks reads like a tawdry soap opera: “Fraud, helicopters, cannabis, cabals,” Sen. Tom Umberg quipped, with example after example of hardball bully influence peddling, gifting of millions of public dollars to private interests, revealing city secrets for personal gain, pay-to-play and so much more, which should make eager prosecutors foam at the mouth.

On and on it goes for more than 350 pages, illuminating the puppet strings allegedly rigged to some Anaheim City Councilmembers, expertly pulled by the likes of Disney and the Angels and a shadowy army of lobbyists and political consultants who actually ran the show. I mean, we knew this part, but it’s stunning to see it in black and white in a document paid for by the city.

Perhaps the strangest outcome of this scandal would be lower gasoline prices in Anaheim Hills. Please. Stay with us here.

My colleagues are bringing you the big picture news on the city’s $1.5 million corruption investigation , launched after the FBI’s corruption investigations into former Mayor Harry Sidhu and former Anaheim Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Todd Ament became public (Sidhu said he wanted big money from the Angels for helping it buy the city-owned Angels Stadium in what many called a sweetheart deal; Angels reps have repeatedly said they knew nothing about Sidhu’s intentions).

Here, though, we’ll narrow our focus to a tragically banal slice of small-time powerbroking, the kind you find in so many cities and agencies. Yes, Anaheim’s situation may be extreme — what other city has Disneyland and a Major League Baseball team to “partner” with? — but the game is played, more or less, everywhere. It’s called “local politics,” and it can read like a bad dime store novel.

Fill ‘er up

This one begins in 1967 on the corner of La Palma and Imperial in Anaheim Hills, where Isa Bahu’s father opened an Arco station and built his American Dream. It was the only station on that corner. It did well.

But Orange County grew, and the roads needed widening, and old gas stations needed environmental cleanup. There was eminent domain and legal wrangling and the Bahu’s Arco station was torn down and scrubbed. City officials assured the Bahu family that it would be able to rebuild in due time.

Oh — and a Shell station went up across the street, belonging to Navaz Malik.

Turns out that Malik was good pals with Sidhu, the report said. In 2007, Malik hosted a fundraiser for Sidhu’s (unsuccessful) state Senate run. In 2016, Malik contributed $2,200 to Sidhu’s (unsuccessful) campaign for state Assembly. In 2017, Malik contributed $2,000 to Sidhu’s (successful) mayoral campaign. From 2017 to 2021, the Malik family gave another $8,600 toward Sidhu’s mayoral campaigns, the report noted.

Can someone be bought for so little? “I didn’t realize how incestuous these people are,” Bahu told investigators.

Now solo on that corner, Malik’s Shell station was charging 20 to 50 cents more per gallon than other OC stations, the Bahu family said. Bahu’s father toyed with turning his lot into a little shopping center, but it wasn’t quite big enough, so he decided to rebuild the gas station that had allowed his roots in America to grow.

Unfortunately, he died before that could happen. In 2015, Bahu submitted the paperwork to get the project rolling with the city. Ament started calling Bahu’s sister May, offering to help shepherd the project through. They declined, saying they ran a station there for years and knew how to do it. Ament kept pushing.

Ament wanted to charge the Bahus $50,000 for his assistance, Isa Bahu told investigators.

“He was hinting to me that ‘you need help,’ not ‘do you want help,’” May Bahu told investigators.

It appeared for a time that the Bahus were right — they didn’t need help. There were adjustments for this and that — Can we build closer to the neighboring property line? Can we shrink the front landscaping? Where will the driveway go? — and the project finally was approved by Anaheim’s planning commission in 2019.

It was not a clean success.

‘Dirty’

Todd Ament, then president & CEO of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, in 2018. (Sam Gangwer, Contributing Photographer)

It was one little gas station, but Malik and other big guns contested the approval on the grounds of safety. There would be traffic jams. Danger from fuel delivery trucks. Conflict with the nearby bus stop. Hazards to drivers.

The Bahu family countered. Of course the Shell station wants to preserve its monopoly. Our project will drive down the price of gas in that corner of Anaheim Hills and tighten their margins. That might not be good for the Shell station, but it will be good for the people of Anaheim Hills.

More than 100 local residents weighed in, telling the city saying they wanted the competition of another station to drive down prices. City planners had already concluded that the station posed no safety risk.

No matter. Sidhu was talking directly to city workers about the project — a small matter that usually wouldn’t garner a mayor’s official attention. Sidhu told the fire chief he was concerned about an engine being able to get on the property, the report said. He was concerned about access to a fire hydrant.

Councilmembers who told Bahu they’d support his project if the planning commission approved it reversed course. Then-Councilman Jordan Brandman said that if Bahu wanted Brandman’s vote, he must get Sidhu’s vote first. Brandman wasn’t going to vote against Sidhu.

Harry Sidhu talking about plans for a public cemetery in 2021.(Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

“Hey Isa,” political consultant Grant Henninger told Bahu, according to the report. “It would look really good, because they are short on Fourth of July money for the parade (in Anaheim Hills), if you put some money towards it…. This will go a long way with the people in the middle. You’re helping the community.”

Bahu responded that his family has been helping the community for years, and there are plaques and certificates marking their contributions all over town, but he decided that a booth at the festival would allow him to showcase a model of his project and gain community support. He wrote a check for $5,000.

Organizers never offered him a booth or returned his calls. He canceled the check.

“You’re screwed,” Ament told Bahu. “If you had hired me a year ago, you would be fine.”

Perhaps in the pettiest move of all, city code enforcement removed a sign on the Bahu property supporting Sidhu challenger Ashleigh Aitken.

“I was aghast,” Linda Andal, Anaheim’s human resources director and former interim city manager, told investigators about the whole gas station debacle. “It was very dirty, in my opinion.”

Remedy?

Indeed, it was dirty in the investigators’ opinion as well.

“It is our belief that then-Mayor Sidhu, considering these political contributions and using his power over the majority of the City Council, went about wrongfully denying Bahu and his development plans due primarily to the competing gas station owner’s political contributions to Sidhu’s campaign,” the investigation concluded.

Sidhu didn’t return requests for comment. Neither did Malik.

Bahu, however, is sanguine.

He doesn’t want to sue the city, he said. He doesn’t want to siphon away money better spent on public services. But there is one clear and simple remedy, he said:

Let his family build the gas station.

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