California High-Speed Rail Board Restricts CEO’s Contract Authority After Travel Expense Violations

The board voted 7–2 in a one-and-a-half hour closed session approving the revisions that limit Choudri’s authority of contracts or procurement within $25 million must be preapproved by the authority’s legal counsel.

The investigation by the Office of the Inspector General, an independent entity overseeing the California High-Speed Rail Authority, found that some consultants from four companies took first-class flights, luxury rideshares to travel to a cigar lounge in Washington, D.C., a Planet Fitness gym, an escape room, and various residences in Folsom, Sacramento, and Walnut Creek with no preapprovals or explanations.

State regulations require its employees or contractors to claim travel expenses of trips that were legitimate and necessary, usually approved in advance by contract managers.

As of Oct. 9, the inspection found $800,900 travel expenses by consultants of the four contracted companies with no advanced approval from 2024–2026, compared to $680,500 in the initial inspection report issued on Sep. 15.

The updated report also found $595,600 travel expenses that were not allowable under state regulations, under the contracts, or both in the same two-year span.

“Billing the state, the taxpayers, unallowable travel expenses, failing to follow required procedures, and lapses in basic accountability by management are issues that must be corrected, and they will be,” Board Chair Steve Kawa said in the Oct. 9 special board meeting.

Contractor managers and consultants will also be required to complete travel expense training,

“The authority will also seek reimbursement of any consultant travel expense that falls outside of state policy,” said Kawa.

The four contractors were identified in the board meeting as financial adviser KPMG, outside legal counsel Nossaman LLP, AECOM-Fluor Joint Venture for program delivery support (PDS) services, and track and system design contractor SYSTRA/TYPSA Joint Venture.

KPMG hired Lyudmyla Starostyuk, Choudri’s fiance, in January 2026.

“For three of the four contracts—the Financial Advisor, Legal Services, and PDS—the contract manager had either no role or an extremely limited role in approving travel requests,” wrote the initial report. They instead took the CEO or other executive’s preference for things to be done in person as approval.

In a case when a contract manager had concerns about the need of the travel, the man told investigators that “it is not appropriate for him to second-guess or ignore direction received from the CEO … ‘as other consultants in other Authority offices are learning the hard way,’” according to the Sep. 15 report.

One consultant flew his private plane from Washington, D.C., to California. Each direction cost $4,182, and he requested that instead of being reimbursed the entire cost of the flights, he would be reimbursed the cost of a comparable commercial premium flight, the inspection report said. His request was granted. Neither the use of a private aircraft nor this type of reimbursement was approved by the authority in advance, according to the report.

AECOM employee Veronica Siranosian told the board that the company reviewed the travel expenses during the inspection and “didn’t find any substantive deviations for the travel approval procedures.”

Siranosian said that “every single role on the contract has an approved percentage of travel, so for us, that is an approval by the authority of that role.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the other three companies for comment.

Board member and former Rep. Lynn Schenk (D-Calif.) said, “From decades of experience, I have seen that sometimes the smallest incident shows something much deeper.”

“I’m trying to keep my sense of outrage about this at a minimum here. But I am outraged that we would be treated like a piggy bank,” Schenk said.

California Assemblywoman Alexandra Macedo, who is also the Republican Assembly leader, called for the board to terminate Choudri.

“Mr. Choudri’s reign has been marked by a culture of disregard for the state law, persistent financial mismanagement, lack of oversight, and administrative abuses within the Authority,” Macedo wrote in an Oct. 8 letter to Kawa.

Macedo also called the board to halt all consultant expense reimbursements, and begin an initial clawback effort to recover improper spending.