During former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s tenure, Vanecko and the mayor’s son Patrick Daley acquired a 4 percent stake in a sewer inspection company that held a city contract. The sewer company got caught up in a federal investigation that found that it and others used a minority-owned business as a front to win city business. Vanecko and the mayor’s son were not accused of wrongdoing, but it created plenty of political embarrassment for the mayor, who fought off tears at the time while saying his son was guilty of “a lapse in judgment.”