Sunday, April 24, 2005

IRS raids La Shish owner

Agents seize $1 million, say he may have talked to witnesses in son's murder charge.

By David Shepardson / The Detroit News

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DEARBORN -- The owner of the popular restaurant chain La Shish, under investigation by the IRS, is now being probed for obstruction of justice in an unrelated case.

Federal agents, during an IRS raid of owner Talal Chahine's Plymouth and Dearborn homes and La Shish's Dearborn headquarters, found tape recordings that they say suggest Chahine may have solicited evidence on behalf of his son.

His son is on trial for first-degree murder in Wayne County.

On Tuesday, more than 40 IRS agents executed the search warrants as part of a tax investigation. The agents found $1 million in cash in addition to the tapes, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Chadwell said.

"It appears that Talal Chahine, the father of the son who is charged with murder, was going around and speaking to witnesses to the murder case and eliciting statements from them," Chadwell said Friday at an evidentiary hearing in U.S. District Court. "It appears that some of these tapes may relate to obstruction of justice committed by Talal Chahine."

Chahine's 23-year-old son, Khalil, is accused of shooting and killing 20-year-old Paul Hallis in Dearborn on May 16, 2004, in a dispute over a woman they each dated.

Allan S. Rubin, a lawyer for the Chahines, declined to comment on the nature of the tax investigation and said he knew nothing of the tapes in possession of the U.S. Attorney's Office. But he said soon after the shooting, Talal Chahine turned over a tape of a conversation he had with a witness to Dearborn police.

On Friday, the U.S. Attorney's Office turned over the tapes seized during the raid to the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office after U.S. Magistrate Steven Pepe approved the move. Some of the tapes are in Arabic and have not yet been reviewed, Chadwell said during Friday's hearing. Chadwell said IRS agents may be forced to testify at the Wayne Circuit Court trial.

Khalil Chahine's trial resumes Monday in its ninth day. Prosecutors have called 16 witnesses. His attorneys plan a "vigorous defense," Rubin said.

As part of the tax investigation, agents seized thousands of pages of records, including tax records dating to 2000. They disclosed Friday that they had seized more than 200 items, including employee records, along with U.S. and Lebanese passports out of a safe. They also seized shredded sales receipts out of a warehouse.

Talal Chahine came to the United States from Lebanon at age 16 and holds two degrees from the University of Michigan. A former engineer at Ford Motor Co., he owns a 4-acre site in Dearborn that's home to the now-vacant Montgomery Ward building. He has said previously that La Shish has millions in annual revenues.

You can reach David Shepardson at (313) 222-2028 or dshepardson@detnews.com.