05/31/2002

By DAVID McPHERSON
projo.com staff writer

PROVIDENCE / Updated 2:25 p.m. -- The lawyer for former mayoral top aide Frank E. Corrente tried today to blunt the impact on jurors of two surveillance tapes showing Corrente accepting $1,000 cash payments from an undercover businessman.

C. Leonard O'Brien ended his cross-examination of key government witness Antonio R. Freitas by trying to show that the FBI orchestrated the events surrounding payments Freitas made to Corrente and that Corrente did nothing to initiate them.

Tapes showing Corrente accepting the payments may be the most dramatic evidence in the federal corruption case against him, Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., and two codefendants.

The trial concluded its sixth week today, but without the prosecution resting its case as anticipated. Part of the reason was O'Brien's prolonged and intense questioning of Freitas.

"Weren't you told to put the envelope on his desk by the FBI?" O'Brien asked Freitas, about the first purported bribe on Dec. 3, 1998.

"Yes," Freitas responded.

Journal photo / Mary Murphy BACK FOR MORE: Star government witness Antonio R. Freitas heads to court this morning where he once again was cross-examined by the defense.

O'Brien then asked if Freitas made a second payment on Jan. 7, 1999, at the FBI'S direction because he had not displayed the cash for the surveillance camera in the first one.

"They told me any time I make a payment to always try to display the money," Freitas said.

"To catch it on tape?" O'Brien asked.

"That's the idea," Freitas answered.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard Rose tried to counter O'Brien's questioning about the payments by reviewing with Freitas transcripts of the taped meetings between Corrente and Freitas. In both meetings, Corrente called a School Department official to encourage the Marriott Corp. -- a Providence schools contractor -- to lease a building owned by Freitas.

Freitas made the two $1,000 payments to Corrente, at the FBI's direction, in a bid to secure the Marriott lease.

Earlier, Freitas testified the School Department officials gave him the runaround when he bid for an earlier lease in late 1997.

"They were liars from the beginning," Freitas said, disclosing his bitterness over not winning that lease from the School Department during O'Brien's questioning.

The failed bid in part led to Freitas's decision to work undercover for the FBI during its Plunder Dome probe into corruption at City Hall.

Before submitting a bid, Freitas said he had called the School Department to be sure that the lease process would be straightforward. He said he was told that it was because school officials said they were under scrutiny by the FBI.

But, Freitas said, the request for lease proposals was not advertised as usual in The Providence Journal, a statewide newspaper.

"It was advertised in the Phoenix under the love connection," he said, referring to an area alternative paper.

O'Brien shot back, "And you found it there?"

That exchange prompted the one moment of levity during an otherwise serious and intense cross-examination.

Freitas accused School Department finance director Mark Dunham in particular of just going through the motions when he toured Freitas's building as a potential lease site for warehouse and office space.

"I think he (Dunham) was lying for somebody," Freitas said.

Freitas had been the low bidder in the first round of bidding for the lease, which was to replace a lease held by defendant Edward Voccola, which had come under FBI scrutiny. But those bids were thrown out, and a second round accepted. Freitas was not the low bidder that time.

Freitas, a businessman who owns JKL Engineering, has served as the government's star witness in the case, both on the stand and on video and audio tapes he secretly recorded on the FBI's behalf.

The government alleges that Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. masterminded an alleged racketeering enterprise out of City Hall. In its indictment, the government charges Cianci, his former top aide Corrente, Voccola and Richard Autiello with a total of 29 counts of racketeering, conspiracy, extortion, bribery, mail fraud and witness tampering.

Because O'Brien's cross-examination of Freitas lasted longer than expected, the prosecution was unable to rest its case today. Freitas is due to be followed on the stand by three minor witnesses for the prosecution to verify records introduced earlier in the trial.

Following its practice of wrapping up early on Fridays, court has now ended for the day. Further questioning of Freitas by federal prosecutor Rose will resume Monday morning.