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6.6.2001 00:05
Prosecutors
fight release
of campaign
accounts
• The lawyer for Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr.'s campaign organization says checks will probably bounce and that the campaign has outstanding bills.
BY TRACY BRETON
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE
-- Federal prosecutors are objecting to a motion filed by Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr.'s campaign organization asking that a restraining order against it be lifted or modified so it can pay its creditors.
The U.S. Attorney's office stated its objection in court papers filed yesterday in the Operation Plunder Dome corruption case against the mayor and his five codefendants. But the prosecutors did not state the reasons for their objection in the public record. Instead, they submitted a memorandum of law to Ernest C. Torres, the judge who is presiding over the case.
Torres will review the memorandum and decide whether it should be put in the public record.
The mayor's campaign organization is trying to convince Torres to vacate or modify the restraining order that has frozen its assets, pending a trial of the mayor and the others who have been indicted with him -- his former top aide Frank E. Corrente; his chief of staff Artin H. Coloian; tow operator Richard E. Autiello; convicted felon Edward Voccola; and Joseph A. Pannone, former chairman of the city's Board of Tax Assessment Review.
In papers filed in court last month, the Friends of Cianci says that the government's need to preserve the campaign's assets "does not outweigh the hardships that would be imposed" on the campaign organization and its creditors if the Friends of Cianci cannot pay its bills.
At the government's request, Torres issued a restraining order April 3 -- the day after Cianci's indictment -- freezing three bank and brokerage accounts of the mayor's campaign organization. The order means that the mayor no longer has access to those campaign funds. In recent years, according to quarterly state campaign-finance reports, the campaign fund has had more than $600,000 in its accounts.
Mark L. Smith, the lawyer for Cianci's campaign organization, says in court papers that checks totaling $36,058.48 are likely to bounce because of the restraining order and that the campaign has outstanding bills totaling $33,161.23.
Among the outstanding bills: Smith says he is owed $6,382 for services rendered as far back as August, when, after a Providence Sunday Journal story, the state Board of Elections and the Rhode Island attorney general's office started investigating some of the campaign's expenditures.
In May last year, The Journal reported that Cianci had spent thousands of dollars in campaign money on personal expenses in recent years, including Christmas parties, personal holiday gifts and birthday parties for his two grandchildren. A statewide grand jury has been investigating the campaign expenditures for several months.
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