A former San Francisco Chief Assistant Treasurer allegedly steered contracts towards a friend\u2019s company to the tune of several million dollars, according to a joint audit by the San Francisco Office of the Controller and City Attorney published Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the city, Tajel Shah \u201cabused her position\u201d to help technology firm Mechanical Orchard win a $7 million\u00a0<\/p>\n
The report alleges Shah accepted Mechanical Orchard\u2019s bid for a new business tax system despite their not meeting minimum qualifications. She also allegedly changed scoring formulas in Mechanical Orchard\u2019s favor, added costs to other vendors\u2019 proposals to improve Mechanical Orchard\u2019s rankings and paid the firm for a previous discovery project through a backdoor subcontract. Shah\u2019s close friend, Roque Versace, was chief revenue officer of Mechanical Orchard at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the report, the organizational structure at the treasurer\u2019s office during Shah\u2019s tenure \u2014 in which she oversaw human resources \u2014 discouraged colleagues from reporting concerns about her behavior.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/BCN-20260624-AMANDAFRIED-01.jpg\")
San Francisco Office of the Treasurer & Tax Collector Chief Assistant Treasurer Amanda Fried. Fried was appointed to the position on Friday, January 30, 2026 after joining the organization in October 2014. (City of San Francisco via Bay City News)<\/p>\n
Mechanical Orchard withdrew from contracts negotiations on Sept. 24, 2025, one day before a news outlet published an investigation into Shah\u2019s actions. Shah was released from her position in November 2025. Her successor, Amanda Fried, was appointed in January.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMs. Shah has done absolutely nothing wrong,\u201d wrote Shah\u2019s legal representative, Fred Norton, in correspondence with the City Attorney and Office of the Controller.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to Norton, Shah had no obligation to report her friendship with Versace.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAt no time did she try to influence the process in favor of other bidders,\u201d Norton wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shah could not be reached for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former San Francisco Chief Assistant Treasurer allegedly steered contracts towards a friend\u2019s company to the tune of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[20761,2085,152024,21148,21980,152025,101,103,102,152026,104,106,105,152027],"class_list":["post-375221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-allegations","tag-audit","tag-city-attorney-david-chiu","tag-contracts","tag-corruption","tag-ethics-investigation","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-san-francisco-office-of-the-controller","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-tajel-shah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}