|
|
11.2.2001
Judge sets tentative date
for Cianci's corruption trial
• Jury selection will probably begin April 2, says a clerk for Chief U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres.
BY TRACY BRETON
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE
-- The federal corruption trial of Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. and his five co-defendants has been tentatively set for April.
A clerk for Chief U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres said yesterday that the case had been put on Torres's April trial calendar and that jury selection would probably begin April 2.
Torres said recently that he expected the racketeering/extortion trial to last about six weeks.
The defendants are Cianci; his former top aide Frank E. Corrente; the mayor's chief of staff, Artin H. Coloian; Richard E. Autiello, a body-shop owner and member of the Providence Towing Association; Edward Voccola, a convicted felon and owner of property leased to the School Department; and Joseph A. Pannone, former chairman of the Board of Tax Assessment Review.
The defendants have all pleaded not guilty.
"I'm going to fight this as far as I can," Cianci vowed the day the indictment was unsealed in April. "I'm going all the way to the [U.S.] Supreme Court, to The Hague, wherever they want to go," he said.
The 30-count indictment, in a case that has become known as Operation Plunder Dome, charges Cianci and his five co-defendants with racketeering, conspiracy extortion, mail fraud and witness tampering. It alleges that the mayor and those indicted with him took more than $1.5 million during the 1990s -- extorting cash and campaign contributions for leases, contracts, jobs, promotions and other benefits.
Most of that money involved an allegedly crooked deal in which the impoverished School Department paid $1.3 million to rent space in a former auto-body shop owned by Voccola.
Another $250,000 in campaign contributions was allegedly extorted from tow-truck operators to keep their place on the Police Department's lucrative tow list.
Cianci, 60, the longest-serving mayor in Providence history, is also charged with attempting to extort a $10,000 bribe in a city real-estate deal, extorting a $10,000 bribe for a property-tax reduction, extorting a $5,000 bribe for a city job and extorting a free lifetime membership in the exclusive University Club, which in the past had refused to admit him, by holding up the club's building permits in 1998.
The mayor also is accused of witness tampering for allegedly trying to influence the grand-jury testimony of a city official, Steven Antonson, in the summer of 1999 concerning the University Club.
|
|
|
|
