NIAGARA FALLS, NEW YORK
November 11, 2009 - Mark S. Congi, 45, former president of Laborers Local 91 (Niagara Falls, NY) is looking for a reduction in his 15-year sentence for racketeering after testifying on Monday at the trial of Joseph L. Bruno, (R) former leader of the State Senate. The trial is ongoing.
Congi testified
that that his late boss, Michael “Butch” Quarcini, expected “favors” from Bruno in exchange for investing union pension funds with a company that employed Bruno as a consultant.Bruno was indicted in January 2009 on eight counts of corruption, including mail and wire fraud. He was the Senate majority leader from 1995 until retiring last year. Several officials from various unions have testified so far at the trial.
“[Quarcini] felt to make Mr. Bruno happy, we’d invest with this company, and he’d do us favors in return,” Congi testified. “[Quarcini] felt the more money we gave to the company, the more help we were going to get from Senator Bruno.”
But under cross-examination, Congi admitted that there is no way to independently verify his account of any statements made by Quarcini, who died in 2003 while under indictment on racketeering charges.
Congi was convicted in 2006 of using death threats, vandalism and a firebombing to intimidate rivals. Eighteen members and former leaders of the union either pleaded guilty or were convicted after jury trials.
In New York, there was another interesting trial.
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK
U.S. Envoy George Mitchell Defends Frederic Bourke at FCPA Trial
June 13, 2009 - Former Senator George Mitchell testified that he invested $200,000 in a project to purchase Azerbaijan's state oil company. Prosecutors have alleged that Connecticut businessman Frederick Bourke, 63, and others participated in a scheme to bribe Azeri government officials to sell off the oil company in exchange for profits of a resale. Mitchell, who was one of several investors in the project, has not been charged.
Mitchell testified that he traveled to Baku to meet with the president of Azerbaijan, but the oil project stalled. After his testimony on Bourke's behalf, Mitchell said that Bourke was a friend and he still trusted him.
At the trial, witnesses described plane flights into Azerbaijan with millions of dollars stuffed into suitcases, of shakedowns in government offices.
GUILTY VERDICT
After a six-week trial, a federal jury in July found Bourke guilty of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the travel act and making false statements to federal law-enforcement officials. The charges were related to a scheme to bribe Azerbaijan government officials in connection with the privatization of the State Oil Co. of the Azerbaijan.
MINIMAL SENTENCE
He was sentenced to one year and 1 day in prison and was ordered to pay a a $1 million fine for, Bloomberg News reported, "conspiring to pay bribes to leaders in Azerbaijan in what U.S. prosecutors called one of the most corrupt investment schemes in the former Soviet Union."
According to evidence presented at trial, Bourke participated in a scheme to bribe senior government officials in Azerbaijan with several hundred million dollars in shares of stock, cash and other gifts, to ensure that those officials would privatize the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) in a rigged auction that only Bourke, fugitive Czech investor Viktor Kozeny and members of their investment consortium could win, to their massive profit. Kozeny is under indictment in the Southern District of New York for his alleged role in the scheme.Kozeny is fighting extradition from the Bahamas. He was described as a friend and neighbor of Bourke's in Aspen, Colorado.
Bourke will serve three years of supervised release following the prison term.
