Minneapolis Police are investigating possible election law violations by the flamboyant and controversial developer Basim Sabri, according to a search warrant filed Monday in Hennepin County District Court.

Council Member Robert Lilligren, who represents the central inner-city 6th Ward, told police he had found campaign literature containing false information about him distributed throughout his ward during the recent election campaign in which Lilligren was reelected.

The literature didn’t contain the required public disclosure about who paid for it, Lilligren told police, according to the warrant.

Lilligren succeeded former City Council Member Brian Herron. Both Herron and Sabri went to federal prison after being convicted in a bribery plot recorded by the FBI in 2003.

On the eve of the recent city elections, Lilligren said, he discovered that someone had removed his literature from cars in his ward and replaced it with the literature that was critical of him. Lilligren told police that at the time, he happened to see Mayor R.T. Rybak speaking with Sabri, who was in a car in a 6th Ward neighborhood, and Lilligren said that Rybak saw inside the car “piles of campaign literature of Lilligren’s which had been removed from vehicles,” according to the warrant.

Sabri, who was highly critical of Lilligren during an interview Monday, denied taking his literature. “Lilligren’s got a lot of enemies,” he said. “He’s not a well-liked person.”

Sabri said when he encountered Rybak that day, he had one piece of Lilligren’s literature in his car. He said he was unaware of any allegations against him.

When told of the contents of the search warrant, Sabri said with mock concern, “It sounds very serious,” and then laughed. He called the claims in the warrant “a bunch of crap.”