San Jose candidate worked for controversial Chinese developer

A leading San Jose City Council candidate worked under a Chinese billionaire arrested on bribery and corruption charges — mainly helping the embattled CEO’s company sell off land from his failed developments in the Bay Area.

San Jose Planning Commissioner George Casey, who’s locked in a heated race to replace District 10 Councilmember Arjun Batra, advised a company belonging to Zhang Li, the former co-chairman and CEO of Chinese developer Guangzhou R&F Properties. Its U.S. affiliate, Z&L Properties Inc., developed a string of controversial projects in the South Bay including “ Slavery Towers ” — the site of the city’s largest labor trafficking project that harbored 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 lawyer and realtor, maintains he joined Z&L after Li’s admitted bribery of San Francisco officials from 2015-2020 — and that his role was to help Z&L get out of the San Jose market.

“I feel helping this company exit San Jose and transfer these properties to a developer that 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 arrested 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, luxurious trips, expensive meals and gifts to fast-track a stalled project in the city. He pled guilty to bribery charges a year later and agreed to pay a $50,000 fee before he returned to China. His company was fined $1 million.

The real estate mogul’s arrest left a trail of unfinished projects across the Bay Area, becoming eyesores that attracted blight .

The company faced a string of delays and challenges in developing its San Jose projects for years, including 700 planned homes at the former Greyhound bus station site at 70 S. Almaden Ave. in downtown San Jose, and 221 planned homes at 252 N. First St.

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The Chinese developer’s most controversial South Bay project was Silvery Towers. In 2015, Z&L bought the rights to develop 650 apartments in twin high-rises — a potential economic engine for downtown. But in 2017, federal authorities arrested a subcontractor on the project, Job Torres Hernandez, for recruiting workers from a Tijuana newspaper advertisement with the promise of fair wages and legal status in the U.S. Once the workers arrived in Hayward, they were held in sordid quarters, denied compensation and threatened with violence from drug cartels if they spoke out.

Casey doesn’t include Z&L on his LinkedIn and some question why he would work for a company linked to multiple scandals.

“As a business person, you make moral and business judgments on who you decide to do business with and it’s not like he was someone who wouldn’t have the information in front of him to understand who Z&L was,” Bob Staedler, a development and land use consultant, told San José Spotlight. “You’d have to question his judgment and how he would use his judgment to the benefit of his constituents for the city of San Jose.”

Z&L’s shadow

Z&L became the catalyst for a citywide a movement to tackle wage theft, prompting San Jose councilmembers to get stricter on 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 on the city’s efforts to waive development fees for downtown high-rises.

“We have tens of thousands of units permitted that are not being built because they don’t ‘pencil out.’ We need to take these properties on a case by case basis and make sure we are balancing the need for fees to fund services with the vital need for more housing. It really should not be one size fits all,” Casey said.

Z&L’s neglected properties also fueled a city effort to get rid of blight.

Another abandoned Z&L project that has fallen into disrepair is the former First Church of Christ Scientist building . The building has sat 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. For much of the time, however, it was covered in tarps and scaffolding and dubbed the “Trash Bag” church.

The church is among a number of problem hotspots that have ignited calls by Mayor Matt Mahan and Councilmember Omar Torres to increase fines for neglected properties and study blight.

In the race for District 10, Casey received Mahan’s powerful endorsement. 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 get land out of 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 endorsed both Casey and Batra. Police union spokesperson 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 labor conditions and worker protections. Labor protesters organized in the hundreds against Z&L.

Saggau declined to comment on Casey’s past employment by Z&L.

Ruth Silver Taube, a labor and employment lawyer and San José Spotlight columnist , called it “troubling” that Casey has those kinds of connections.

“The city council has been at the forefront of enacting wage theft legislation and has a zero tolerance policy for companies when it comes to human trafficking — particularly labor trafficking,” she told San José Spotlight.

Impartial or not?

Today, Casey works as senior counsel and vice president at a property tech startup called Unlock Technologies. The company’s website says it purchases ownership in homes from people with poor credit to help them pay off debts by having them sign agreements that they’ll have to settle in 5-10 years by either selling their homes or buying out Unlock’s share .

“Every mortgage in America carries the risk of someone defaulting and losing their home,” Casey told San José Spotlight. “What we are doing is helping working families not served by big Wall Street lenders build up credit to be able to improve their financial situation. Why anyone would want to be against helping folks that want to improve their financial situation is really a mystery to me.”
Silvery Towers, the embattled project at the center of the labor trafficking and wage theft scandal, was one of the first to receive a waiver on construction-related fees for downtown high-rises — part of a yearslong effort to encourage more housing construction and turn downtown into a thriving urban center.

San Jose councilmembers in June extended fee waivers for downtown high-rises over the next seven years.

“If he gets elected he’ll obviously be a decision maker that can make these types of decisions. It could be concerning to us,” said Will Smith, a business agent for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’ San Jose chapter, who was one of the most vocal protesters of the job site.

Casey said his work with Z&L won’t stop him from holding developers accountable for wage theft and blight.

“I am proud of the positive impact this work has had on our community,” he said.

Contact Brandon Pho at brandon@sanjosespotlight.com or @brandonphooo on X, formerly known as Twitter.

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