A former top manager at the San Francisco treasurer’s office abused her authority and improperly steered contracts to a company that employed her friend in a high-ranking position while failing to disclose their relationship, a city audit found.
The audit, released Tuesday following a months-long probe by the controller and city attorney, centers around the relationship between former Chief Assistant Treasurer Tajel Shah and Roque Versace, former chief revenue officer for a company called Mechanical Orchard.
The audit found that the treasurer’s office, under Shah’s direction, improperly used a sole-source contract to pay Mechanical Orchard and repeatedly made decisions that benefited the company, resulting in the office deciding to award the firm a multimillion-dollar contract in 2024 to replace its system for managing business taxes…