Companies with ties to St. Louis building inspector also worked on public properties for years

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) - There were new details on Monday about a St. Louis City building inspector who is under investigation for his connections to companies collecting your tax dollars. First Alert 4 Investigates has uncovered those connections also tie to another pot of city money—and they have been going on for years.

First Alert 4 Investigates has been reporting on a program in which the city is going onto private property and making repairs, costing tens of thousands of dollars. They’ve also been doing similar work on properties owned by the public—through St. Louis’ land bank. Now we’ve learned that the program is also under question.

“What was going on? Were they totally asleep at the wheel? It just makes you pause and go, ‘Hmm,’” said Jeffrey Boyd.

Boyd is a former St. Louis alderman who was released this year from federal prison after pleading guilty in a corruption case.

“At the end of the day, I learned a lot from that experience. It’s just making me a better Jeffrey,” Boyd said.

Now home, he says he’s being targeted. The city informed him they’d be hiring a company to make $87,000 worth of repairs to a building he owns on Martin Luther King Drive—repairs, he said, that made no sense.

“If you look at the document, it says I need to replace broken floor joists. It’s a concrete floor. The man never went in the building,” Boyd said.

Last week, First Alert 4 Investigates told you about three companies with ties to St. Louis city inspector Banjo Popoola. Those companies have been paid millions of dollars through a program using federal pandemic funds for work they reportedly did on privately owned buildings. That work, the property owners tell First Alert 4 Investigates, they seriously question.

Popoola, who oversaw the program and inspected the work, resigned Friday. The city said they are investigating. On Friday, officials told us the program had been paused in October “to assess operating procedures and scope of work.”

“Why? Why did you pause the program? Did you pause the program because you finally exposed that this building inspector wasn’t doing what he was supposed to do? Yet he still had that position,” Boyd said.

Now, First Alert 4 Investigates has learned those same companies have also done work on publicly owned buildings. That work was funded through a voter-approved measure called Proposition NS, which seeks to stabilize buildings owned by the Land Reutilization Authority (LRA).

We conducted an extensive search of those buildings.

The city paid Popoola-tied companies—Premier Finish Contractors, Farst Construction, and Maxify Contractors—hundreds of thousands of dollars for repairs, with the work dating back as far as 2021. First Alert 4 Investigates have done previous stories that outlined connections between Popoola and those companies. In some cases, the LRA buildings were later sold for as little as a tenth of the repair price.

“To hear that he’s also the inspector for Prop NS and other special programs—it’s shocking. Who in their right mind would put one person in charge of so much with no checks and balances?” Boyd said.

Boyd was the primary sponsor of Prop NS. He says the program itself is good, but much more needs to be revealed—including why no one caught these connections sooner.

“Does someone need to be held able for this program? Absolutely. But it’s bigger than Banjo, I promise you. It’s bigger than him. This one person could not pull all this off without somebody else on the inside knowing what’s going on. I promise you that,” Boyd said.

Popoola has declined our requests for comment. The city also said they cannot comment due to their ongoing internal investigation but noted they are working to answer why the company connections were not discovered sooner.

The private property repair program remains on pause. However, despite these connections, a city spokesperson says Prop NS is not on pause.

There are so many more questions remaining, and First Alert 4 Investigates is going to keep digging.

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