(CNN) -- Kwame Kilpatrick, the imprisoned former mayor of Detroit, pleaded not guilty to new charges of racketeering, extortion, bribery and filing false tax returns Monday, court officials said.
Kilpatrick, along with four other defendants, was at the arraignment in federal court in Michigan.
The five defendants were silent as their charges were read to them and not guilty pleas were entered for them.
A pretrial hearing was set for April 13.
Others charged in the case are the former mayor's father, Bernard Kilpatrick; Bobby Ferguson, who owned or controlled two businesses that obtained contracts for city work; Victor Mercado, former director of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department; and Derrick Miller, who was Kwame Kilpatrick's deputy chief of staff when he was a Michigan state representative and was his chief administrative officer and chief information officer when he was mayor of Detroit.
In the case, prosecutors alleged that the defendants were "working together to abuse Kwame Kilpatrick's public offices, both his position as a state representative as well as his position of mayor of Detroit, to unjustly enrich themselves through a pattern of extortion, bribery and fraud."
At the heart of the scheme was alleged corruption in municipal contracting, most of it centered in the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, Barbara McQuade, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, has said.
This new case adds to the legal woes of Kilpatrick, who was once a star in the Democratic Party.
Kilpatrick is serving a prison sentence of up to five years for violating probation in a 2008 case against him. That case involved two state felony counts of obstruction of justice stemming from his efforts to cover up an extramarital affair.
He also pleaded no contest to charges of assaulting a police officer attempting to serve a subpoena on one of his friends in that case.
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
|