Roy Amemiya Was A ‘Soft-Spoken’ Banker Known For His Integrity. Then He Was Indicted … Amemiya’s attorney says his client played no role in arranging the retirement deal with disgraced ex-police chief Louis Kealoha. Federal prosecutors say otherwise.
Years before Roy Amemiya was Honolulu’s managing director and before he was accused of a federal crime, he was one of three city officials who helped expose a serious case of corruption.
It was 1997, and then-city finance director Amemiya and his colleagues suspected that something was amiss with some city housing contracts, the Honolulu Advertiser reported. So they told the police. Their concerns turned out to be valid, and a city housing official was convicted of theft, money laundering and forgery for running a bid-rigging scheme.
The incident, which came to be known as the Ewa Villages scandal, was a black eye for the city and Amemiya’s boss at the time, Mayor Jeremy Harris. It was later used against the mayor in that year’s election.
But for Amemiya, it was just the right thing to do, and it’s one of several incidents with a common theme: Even though Amemiya was a political appointee, serving at the pleasure of the mayor, he consistently demonstrated a willingness to push back against actions that he felt were wrong.
