NEW HAVEN, Conn. – For years, the refrain from Gov. John G. Rowland’s office was a familiar chorus: The governor’s office does not award contracts. When a gift was given, it was a friendly gesture. It couldn’t be a bribe because the governor’s office does not award contracts.
Tuesday, the music stopped.
A state contractor and a top aide to the imprisoned former governor pleaded guilty to public corruption charges, admitting what many in Rowland’s office spent years denying – that Connecticut was a place where gold coins, limousine trips and expensive meals could buy access to the state’s highest office.
Peter N. Ellef, Rowland’s former co-chief of staff, admitted rigging a vote to award a $57 million construction deal to contractor William Tomasso. In exchange, Tomasso lavished Ellef and his deputy with cash and luxury items.
“The fairness, openness and integrity of the contracting process in Connecticut was compromised,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nora Dannehy said in court.
Throughout the four-year FBI investigation, Connecticut officials have denied that charge. Even this spring, when Rowland was sentenced to a year in prison for corruption, he downplayed the notion that his office was corrupt.
In court Tuesday, Ellef and Tomasso left no doubt, pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit tax fraud and bribery, charges that likely will send them to prison for two and a half to four years.
Tomasso admitting bribing his way into both the contract to manage the Long Lane School for troubled girls and the $57 million contract to build the Connecticut Juvenile Training School in Middletown. Ellef admitted returning the favor, giving his friend Tomasso inside information about the contracting process, fixing a contracting board’s vote and hiding the gifts from the IRS.
The plea deal, reached just one week before jury selection was to begin, heads off a racketeering trial that was expected to last months. Prosecutors had dozens of witnesses lined up to reveal a dysfunctional contracting system in which contractors wooed state officials with Dom Perignon and free travel.
Ellef, 61, and Tomasso, 40, agreed to pay $1 million restitution to Connecticut. Defense attorneys are expected to argue that neither should serve more time than Rowland.
“We understand what the expected argument will be,” acting U.S. Attorney John Durham said, “and we’ll deal with it in court.”
Though his refusal to turn on his former boss earned him comparisons to Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy, Ellef reassessed his chances in recent weeks as the trial loomed. Nearly every juror questionnaire showed a familiarity with Rowland’s corruption and a negative opinion about Ellef and Tomasso.
When defense attorneys formed a focus group, the mock jurors felt the same, said Ellef’s attorney, Hugh Keefe.
“In this climate, it’s extremely difficult to find an unbiased jury in the state of Connecticut,” Keefe said.
Faced with those odds, Ellef accepted a deal in which he pleaded guilty and his son, Peter Ellef II, 34, had his racketeering case dropped. The younger Ellef’s landscaping business made at least $2 million from Tomasso and prosecutors said the business funneled money from Tomasso to the elder Ellef.
Ellef II will pay $62,000 in back taxes to resolve the case.
Tomasso’s deal allows his family’s companies, Tomasso Brothers Inc. and Tunxis Management, to remain open. TBI was dropped from the case and Tunxis pleaded guilty to tax fraud. Prosecutors also acknowledged that the companies never overcharged or performed substandard work.
Sentencing for Tomasso and Ellef is Jan. 13. The million-dollar payment also resolved the state civil case, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said.
“The only good thing in all of this is that it’s over,” Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who served as Rowland’s lieutenant governor and took office when Rowland resigned last year, said in a statement released when news of the deal broke late Monday.
The four-year FBI investigation spun out of the case that sent former state Treasurer Paul Silvester to prison for corruption. The involvement of Rowland’s office became clear in 2003, when Rowland’s former deputy chief of staff, Lawrence Alibozek, pleaded guilty to corruption and became the FBI’s key witness.
Dannehy, the top public corruption prosecutor in the state, said the guilty pleas Tuesday represent the end of that investigation. Asked whether others close to Rowland remain under scrutiny, she replied: “There are pending investigations.”
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