Copyright 1994 Newsday, Inc.  
Newsday (New York)
November 16, 1994, Wednesday, NASSAU AND SUFFOLK EDITION
SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. A41

LENGTH: 427 words

HEADLINE: Parent Body Seizes NY Mason Tenders;
Mob control, corruption, reasons for the takeover

BYLINE: By Kenneth C. Crowe. STAFF WRITER

BODY:
Confronted with overwhelming evidence of mob domination and pervasive corruption, the Laborers International Union of North America yesterday seized control of its New York-area Mason Tenders district council.

In an extraordinary statement to the district council's 6,000 members in New York City and Long Island, Laborers general president Arthur A. Coia conceded that evidence showed the Mason Tenders district council "has been substantially controlled by outside persons active in organized crime."

The hierarchy of the 700,000-member Laborers has never before admitted the presence of organized crime in any of its 60 district councils or 650 locals in the United States and Canada. The laborers do some of the dirtiest construction work, including removing asbestos and cleaning up work sites.

Coia appointed David W. Elbaor, a 48-year-old Washington, D.C.-based lawyer, as the international trustee to run the district council. Elbaor, a former law partner of Robert J. Connerton, the general counsel of the Laborers International, was a federal organized
crime prosecutor from 1976 to 1980.       Accompanied by two FBI agents,
Elbaor yesterday showed up at the district council's headquarters on East 37th Street in Manhattan to assume control.

James Lupo, the $ 315,000-a-year district council president, was among those removed from power. Lupo is the third generation of his family to occupy the presidency. His brother, Frank Lupo, who preceded him as president, is serving a federal prison term for labor racketeering in connection with the theft of millions of dollars in Mason Tenders pension funds in a real estate scam that was uncovered by a Newsday investigation in 1991.

In September, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District filed a civil racketeering suit seeking a government takeover of the Mason Tenders and charging that more than $ 50 million in pension and health insurance funds had been looted and wasted since 1987.

On Nov. 1, Assistant U.S. Attorney Allan Taffet filed a motion asking U.S. District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet to appoint a monitor and an investigative officer to act against the mob presence and the corruption. Taffet's motion was accompanied by sworn statements from Frank Lupo and others describing how the district council was controlled by Genovese crime family capos. The statements showed payoffs were routinely made in exchange for allowing contractors to use nonunion workers and to cheat on fringe benefit contributions, as well as detailing the real estate ripoffs.