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4.3.2001
Grand jury indicts Cianci,
5 others on 30 counts of
racketeering, conspiracy
Mayor insists:
'I'm not guilty
of these charges'
BY MIKE STANTON
Journal Staff Writer
Vincent A. Cianci Jr., the irrepressible mayor behind the Providence renaissance, was charged yesterday with presiding over a Dark Ages-style corruption racket in City Hall.
A 30-count indictment unsealed in Operation Plunder Dome late yesterday afternoon at U.S. District Court charged Cianci and five others, including two of his closest aides, with racketeering, conspiracy, extortion, mail fraud and witness tampering.
The grand-jury indictment, which goes on for 97 pages, alleges that Cianci and his co-defendants 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 a convicted felon, Edward E. Voccola, who was also indicted yesterday.
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.
"I assure you that I'm not guilty of these charges," a defiant Cianci said at a City Hall news conference last night, waving a copy of the indictment. "I'm not afraid of this. Ninety-seven times zero is zero.
"I said before there are no stains on this jacket, and there are still no stains on this jacket . . . I'm going to fight this as far as I can. I'm going to go all the way to the [U.S.] Supreme Court, to the Hague [an international court of law], wherever they want to go."
Cianci, the longest-serving mayor in Providence history, was 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.
The University Club affair involves allegations that the mayor punished the club for its past refusal to make him a member by blocking building permits and threatening to shut the place down -- until the club apologized and made him an honorary member. At one point, the indictment says, Cianci vowed to "turn the University Club into a BYOB (Bring Your Own Bottle) club."
The mayor was also charged with witness tampering for allegedly trying to influence the grand-jury testimony of a city official in the summer of 1999 concerning the University Club.
Also charged was Cianci's long-time director of administration and campaign treasurer, Frank E. Corrente, and the mayor's chief of staff, Artin H. Coloian.
The other two people indicted yesterday were Richard E. Autiello, a prominent Providence tow-truck operator and body-shop owner, and Joseph Pannone, the former Providence tax-board chairman who is in prison after pleading guilty to earlier corruption charges.
Corrente and Autiello were charged with taking a $5,000 bribe to admit Joseph Maggiacomo III to the Providence Police Academy. Maggiacomo was a troubled ex-cop from Florida with a history of run-ins with the law.
The indictment caps a sweeping federal corruption probe, Operation Plunder Dome, that began more than three years ago and became public two years ago, when FBI agents raided City Hall.
For Cianci, it also marks the latest twist in a colorful and turbulent public career spanning three decades. He has endured earlier scandals, including a 1980s federal corruption probe that resulted in 22 convictions but did not touch him, and a 1984 felony assault conviction, to reign as the longest-serving big-city mayor in America today.
Yesterday's indictment reduces Cianci's well-worn nickname to an alias, repeatedly referring to the mayor as "Vincent A. Cianci Jr., a/k/a 'Buddy.' "
The U.S. attorney's office listed the address for Cianci, who turns 60 on April 30, as simply the Providence Biltmore. The mayor has lived in the hotel's Presidential Suite since selling his million-dollar mansion on Power Street last year, fueling rumors even then of his impending indictment.
Count 1 of yesterday's indictment charges Cianci with leading a racketeering enterprise involving 13 different city departments and agencies, as well as his campaign organization, Friends of Cianci.
The indictment charges that certain assets controlled by the defendants should be forfeited because they were derived from criminal conduct -- including a Friends of Cianci brokerage account and a partnership investment in New York City. The amounts in those accounts were not revealed.
Last night, standing before the glare of a dozen television cameras in his office, the mayor vowed to fight the charges and press on with the Providence eenaissance, including a date Thursday at the White House with President George W. Bush for a summit on "The New American City."
"This is one of the biggest challenges that I've ever had," Cianci said. "I'll defend myself against these charges until the day I die."
As he spoke, Cianci was applauded by several dozen aides and supporters, including an African American bishop who repeatedly chanted "Amen."
THE INDICTMENTS
also seemed designed to put more pressure on Frank Corrente, who served as Cianci's right-hand man through much of the 1990s.
Corrente, who exerted great influence over all city departments and also served as Cianci's campaign treasurer, retired in the summer of 1999, shortly after Operation Plunder Dome became public.
Last summer, Corrente was indicted on charges that he took payoffs from a businessman working undercover for the FBI, Antonio Freitas, to help Freitas obtain a School Department lease and to expedite city payment for services that Freitas -- a heating and air-conditioning contractor -- had performed.
Corrente's trial on those charges had been set for earlier this year, but was put off as the grand jury moved closer to a new indictment. That indictment, Corrente's lawyer, C. Leonard O'Brien said last night, "makes life miserable after we've spent all this time and energy and resources preparing for trial."
Yesterday, Corrente was charged with several additional counts, including charges that he served as the mayor's point man in shaking down tow operators.
In early 1991, after Cianci regained office, the indictment says, Corrente demanded $5,000 a year in campaign contributions from each contractor on the police tow list.
One of the tow operators was Autiello, who allegedly played a role throughout the 1990s in collecting the money, periodically reminding the other tow operators: "It's that time."
THE CASE
against Cianci, four years in the making, traces its roots to the cracked asphalt of the city's West Broadway neighborhood, on a block of auto-body shops and strip clubs less than a mile from downtown but seemingly light years from the Providence renaissance.
In 1997, a federal grand jury began questioning city officials about Voccola's dealings with Corrente and a string of questionable real-estate deals that, the Journal reported last year, reaped Voccola more than $2.2 million during the 1990s.
The biggest deal involved $1.36 million that the School Department paid to rent Voccola's former body shop, at 400 West Fountain St., for a school registration center.
The indictment charges that Voccola received city leases in exchange for cash payoffs to Corrente, who served as Cianci's "middleman" and shared the money with the mayor. Voccola was also charged with 74 instances of money laundering to generate cash for the purported bribes.
In 1997, when the FBI questioned city property director Alan Sepe about the Voccola lease, Corrente allegedly sought to interfere with Sepe's responses, resulting in a charge yesterday of witness tampering.
The probe of Voccola led the FBI to a spurned bidder for a school lease, Tony Freitas. When the FBI's lead investigator, W. Dennis Aiken, stopped by Freitas's office in January 1998, Freitas complained about City Hall corruption.
Later, Freitas agreed to wear a wire and secretly record city officials taking bribes.
For the next year, from the spring of 1998 to the spring of 1999, Freitas patrolled the seamy underside of the renaissance. Using an array of hidden video cameras and tape recorders, Freitas captured more than 180 conversations involving bribery, extortion and other City Hall scams.
With Joseph Pannone, chairman of the Providence tax board, as his guide, Freitas began paying bribes to Pannone and another tax-board official, vice chairman David C. Ead, for property tax reductions.
And Pannone enlisted the deputy tax assessor, Rosemary Glancy, in his scheme to assist Freitas with his taxes.
Freitas's dealings led to guilty pleas by Pannone, Ead, Annarino and two lawyers who had delivered bribes on behalf of other property owners for tax breaks, John A. Scungio and Angelo "Jerry" Mosca, who is also a long-time State House insider and lobbyist.
THOSE DEALINGS
were also at the heart of some of yesterday's new indictments.
Cianci, Corrente and Pannone were charged with extorting $15,000 in bribes from the estate of buckle manufacturer Fernando M. Ronci to waive $450,000 in back property taxes in the fall of 1998.
Ead, as The Providence Journal reported last October, testified that he met with Cianci to arrange the payoff, $10,000 of which he alleged he delivered to Corrente. Afterward, at a Cianci fundraiser, Ead said that Cianci acknowledged receiving the $10,000.
The Journal also reported on Ead's allegations of meeting with Cianci to arrange a $5,000 bribe to hire Christopher Ise as a city planner and a $10,000 bribe from Freitas in order to buy two vacant lots from the city.
Yesterday's indictment charges Cianci with extorting money in both of those instances.
The counts concerning Ise allege that Ead took the $5,000 payoff to the mayor's office, and that Cianci told him not to be nervous and to bring the money to Coloian.
Under the City Charter, the mayor has the authority to suspend, with or without pay, a city official accused of a crime. Cianci said last night that he would have the city solicitor look into Coloian's status.
THE COUNTS
concerning Freitas and the vacant lots allege that Cianci agreed to the $10,000 bribe early in 1999. The deal was never consummated, and Operation Plunder Dome became public a few months later.
Ironically, other charges involve allegations that Corrente and Pannone tried to enthrone Freitas as Voccola's successor after the FBI started probing Voccola's school leases.
In 1998 and 1999, the indictment alleges, Pannone went to Corrente on behalf of Freitas. "Frank," Pannone allegedly said, "the mayor can make for his next campaign at least $25,000 a year" from Freitas in bribes.
The indictment also alleges that Freitas, on two separate occasions, gave Corrente $1,000 in cash bribes, in his City Hall office. One of those alleged encounters, caught on tape, was leaked to WJAR-Channel 10 and played on television earlier this year; it shows Corrente, as the indictment says, taking the money and putting it in his desk drawer.
THE INDICTMENT
was sealed to give authorities time to arrest Voccola. Voccola, who has a long arrest record, was held overnight at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls. He will be arraigned today.
The other defendants were not arrested. They will be summoned to appear for arraignment at a later date.
Cianci said last night that the government's case was "based on self-serving statements by criminals seeking to save their own skins."
He declined to comment specifically on the charges.
"I'll continue to lead the city to new heights while my lawyer prepares for trial," he said.
Looking on as Cianci declared his innocence was the Boston lawyer who will represent him, Richard M. Egbert, who has built a reputation as one of the best and most tenacious criminal defense attorneys in New England.
A few years ago, Egbert represented former Gov. Edward D. DiPrete on state bribery, racketeering and extortion charges -- a case that ended with DiPrete pleading guilty to most of the charges and serving a year in the Adult Correctional Institutions.
Earlier in the 1990s, Egbert represented the late North Providence Mayor Salvatore Mancini on extortion charges in federal court -- a case that ended with Mancini's acquittal.
More recently, Egbert had been hired by the City of Providence to defend it in the wrongful death lawsuit involving Cornel Young Jr. Egbert also defended Cianci, at $31,000 in city expenses, in a civil racketeering suit brought against the mayor and other city officials last fall by Christopher Ise.
The suit came after Ise was fired following The Journal story detailing the allegations of the bribe he paid to get his job.
"This is the government's best shot," Egbert said of the indictments. "They won't get to control the way the case is tried."
Asked if he would be seeking a change of venue for Cianci, Egbert smiled. The mayor, despite two years of negative publicity concerning Operation Plunder Dome, remains one of Rhode Island's most popular politicians, with an approval rating of more than 60 percent.
"Who would want to leave this wonderful city?" Egbert said. "Who better to judge the mayor than a jury of his peers?"
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With staff reports from Tracy Breton and Karen Lee Ziner.
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