A former assistant inspector general at the Housing and Urban Development Department is asking the Supreme Court to keep him free from prison while he appeals a conviction for allegedly concealing a financial relationship with a personal friend and a company to which he steered government contracts.

Eghbal Saffarinia of Front Royal, Virginia, was convicted and sentenced to one year and one day in prison “in a scheme to conceal material facts, including the nature and extent of his financial relationship with a personal friend who was the owner and chief executive officer of an information technology company,” according to a 2023 release from the Justice Department.

Saffarinia worked at HUD from 2012 to 2017.

The government claimed he steered government contracts to his friend’s tech company and failed to disclose that the friend had loaned him $80,000.

In a filing to the high court addressed to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who oversees appeals from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Saffarinia’s lawyers said the lower courts read the criminal statute used against their client too broadly and that the justices should keep him from reporting to jail when the lower court’s mandate is issued Thursday.

They also plan to appeal his conviction to the high court.

“Without a stay, Saffarinia will suffer ’irreparable harm.’ He will serve all or much of his prison sentence before this court can consider his petition and address the merits,” the filing read. “Under similar circumstances, this court has stayed court of appeals mandates before. It should do so again here.”

• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.