Laborers' Union President Is
Cleared of Links to Mob
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
March 10, 1999
An in-house hearing officer Tuesday cleared
Arthur Coia, president of the Laborers union, of associating with members
of organized crime, but fined him $100,000 for buying a $450,000 Ferrari with help from a
supplier to the union. The ruling was immediately attacked by the Justice Department as
flawed and by conservative groups who said the investigation by union-appointed officials,
to which the department had agreed, was half-hearted because Coia is friendly with
President Clinton.
After a three-year investigation, Peter Vaira, the hearing
officer, who used to be U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia, found that there was not enough
evidence to prove charges that Coia associated with a New England mob boss and that he
appointed a known mob associate to an important union position. In his 108-page ruling,
Vaira ruled against Coia on only one of 16 charges, finding that he was
guilty of a conflict of interest and of receiving improper financial benefits
when a Rhode Island car-leasing company helped him finance the purchase of the Ferrari.
Union officials said that the U.S. Attorney in Boston was
investigating the transaction, in which Coia bought the car while the car-leasing company
held the title, letting Coia avoid more than $40,000 in luxury taxes on the vehicle. This
also enabled Coia to resell the limited edition car three years later as a new vehicle.
The union's in-house prosecution of Coia has
faced repeated attacks from Republican officials because the Clinton administration in
1995 dropped a planned civil racketeering suit against the Laborers, long
considered one of the nation's most corrupt unions, and instead allowed the union to
investigate itself. Republicans have repeatedly maintained that Coia has benefited from a
sweetheart deal because the Laborers union has donated millions of dollars to the
Democratic Party in recent years and because Coia and the president are so friendly that
they have swapped golf clubs as gifts.
Until Tuesday, Justice Department officials repeatedly defended
the in-house investigation, saying it was a model because it saved the
government money and manpower. But Tuesday, Justice Department officials issued an
unusually strong criticism of Vaira's ruling. In a joint statement, James K. Robinson,
assistant attorney general for the department's criminal division, and Scott R. Lassar,
the U.S. Attorney in Chicago -- which conducted the original eight-year
civil racketeering investigation -- said they believed "the opinion contains serious
factual and legal errors" for clearing Coia of mob ties.
The two officials said while they believed the case "was
thoroughly investigated" and "vigorously prosecuted," they would urge
Robert Luskin, the union prosecutor who brought the charges before Vaira, to appeal.
Coia's lawyer, Howard Gutman, welcomed the decision. "The
evidence demonstrated overwhelmingly that Arthur Coia has never been controlled by the mob
and that the mob actually despises Arthur," Gutman said. In a
statement, Coia said that while the investigative process "may have been personally
painful, it was necessary to preserve the integrity of our reform."
Kenneth Boehm, director of the National Legal and Policy Center, a
conservative research group, called the ruling a "slap on the wrist" that shows
the Justice Department was wrong to put its faith in the idea that the
union could reform itself. "The Department needs to admit its mistake, take over the
union and institute real reforms -- especially ousting Coia," Boehm said.
Coia's union, the Laborers International Union of
North America, claims to have 750,000 members, most of them construction workers.
The central charges in the case asserted that Coia violated union
rules by associating with mobsters. Specifically, Luskin asserted that Coia associated
with Raymond Patriarca Jr., head of New England's powerful Patriarca
crime family. Federal prosecutors have long said that Coia's late father, Arthur E. Coia,
who headed the Laborers union in Rhode Island, was a close associate of Patriarca's late
father, Raymond Patriarca Sr., a legendary New England crime boss.
Coia acknowledged knowing the younger Patriarca,
saying they met when they were planning the defense in a case, later dismissed, in which,
Coia, his father and the elder Patriarca were charged with racketeering. But Luskin
charged that Coia had repeatedly met with the younger Patriarca after that case was
dismissed, noting that Patriarca had sought to breed his Rottweiler with dogs from Coia's
prize-winning kennel. Vaira noted that the two key witnesses Luskin used did not provide
the definitive evidence that he had indicated they would. Thomas Hillary,
an unofficial stepson of the elder Patriarca, failed to link Coia meaningfully with
Patriarca, Vaira said, while he found that Nino Cucinotta, the younger Patriarca's driver
who testified that Coia and Patriarca met frequently, was not a credible witness. As for
the Rottweiler breeding, Vaira found that this did not constitute the type of association
prohibited by union rules.
But Vaira lashed into Coia's buying the Ferrari with the help of
Viking Oldsmobile, which leased cars to the union and was run by a long-time friend. Even
though Vaira said Coia did not receive a kickback and lost money when he sold the car for
$380,000, Vaira said Coia violated union rules by engaging in a conflict
of interest in buying the car. Coia purchased the car by providing some cash and trading
in two Ferraris as a down payment and using a $300,000 loan that Viking made available.
"He was offered the unique opportunity to make a large profit and receive favorable
terms on the purchase of the vehicle," Vaira wrote. "The conflict of interest in
this matter occurred at the highest level of the union."