Hawaii News Now broke the news yesterday afternoon that a Honolulu-based businessman who heads an engineering firm had been indicted for paying bribes to land multi-million dollar contracts in the Federated State of Micronesia and here in Hawaii (“Businessman charged with bribing state workers to land $2.5M contract”).

Frank James Lyon, known as Jim Lyon, is listed in business registration records as president and director of Lyon Associates, Incorporated. The Star-Advertiser, in an article this morning, further identified Lyon as a current member of the city’s 5-member Zoning Board of Appeals, with a term that expires at the end of June 2019. He was appointed by Mayor Caldwell in 2014.

The Hawaii payoffs went to an unnamed co-conspirator working in an as-yet unnamed state agency. The money was then channeled to other agency employees in a position to influence the selection of the contractor. The payment disclosed in the indictment was about 10% of the total contract price, about what the rumor mill said was the standard kickback in the wild old days of state procurement.

The indictment alleges the government has records of emails, telephone calls, and other evidence of the bribes, including email specifically acknowledging that some of the payments were illegal and that there was a need to be careful.

My immediate reaction on hearing the news was that this is the first move in the next phase of the Kealoha investigation. But the indictment was not brought by the prosecutors involved in the whole Kealoha mess, so it appears–at least on the surface–to be unrelated.

Although not directly related to the ongoing grand juries that have resulted in charges against the former police chief, his wife, and several others, it’s another unsettling piece of the larger puzzle of corruption in Hawaii, the dimensions of which remain unknown.