U.S. Plans Suit to Get Control of Teamsters : Unprecedented Action to Cite Organized Crime Influence, Seek to Force Out Union Leadership

Government lawyers are preparing an unprecedented civil lawsuit to place the 1.7-million-member Teamsters Union under federal control on grounds that the nation’s largest trade union is under the influence of organized crime, The Times learned Tuesday.

The massive lawsuit, which is being drafted by a team of Justice Department lawyers with help from the FBI and the Labor Department, is aimed at forcing the Teamsters’ 21-member executive board out of office, including union President Jackie Presser, said sources familiar with the case.

Timing of Civil Suit

The civil racketeering action--which would lead to a trial and ultimately a decision by a judge or a jury--is entirely separate from a criminal trial that Presser is facing, now scheduled to begin Aug. 10 in Cleveland. The Presser trial is not likely to affect the timing of the Teamster civil suit, which could be filed before the criminal case begins, one source involved in the matter said.

Government officials said the proposed civil action, under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, would be unprecedented in scope. Never before has an entire union been placed in trusteeship by federal authorities.

Thus far, the government has used the RICO law to place only one Teamster local in New Jersey under court-supervised trusteeship. The successful suit against Union City, N.J., Local 560, which was controlled by convicted racketeer Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano and his brother Salvatore, is the “prototype” for the proposed suit against the Teamsters Union nationally, said two federal officials who declined to be identified.

For years, evidence has mounted in federal courts that the union’s leadership has been close to organized crime figures. An ongoing criminal trial in New York, in which Mafia boss Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno and 10 associates are defendants, has featured testimony from former Teamster President Roy L. Williams and others that Williams’ 1981 election and Presser’s first election in 1983 were controlled by Salerno through members of the Teamster executive board.

In addition, testimony from convicted Cleveland mobster Angelo A. Lonardo and Williams himself, as well as other evidence, has documented that Mafia leaders in Chicago and New York ordered loans for Las Vegas casinos from the giant Teamsters Central States pension fund in Chicago. That fund has since been placed under court supervision with outside investment advisers.

Statistics compiled by the Labor Department and the President’s Commission on Organized Crime list more than 100 local Teamster officials and consultants in the last five years who have been convicted or are under indictment for embezzlement, mail fraud, bribery, racketeering or defrauding union health and welfare plans.

Alleged Corruption

One official said that Assistant Atty. Gen. William Weld, chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division, has instructed that the draft complaint should include evidence of alleged Teamster corruption compiled from criminal and civil cases around the country.

This official, who declined to be identified, said the lawsuit would include “misfeasance” charges against Teamster leaders for their alleged failure to root out internal corruption.

The suit would be filed by Joseph DiGenova, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, sources involved in the case said. DiGenova and David Margolis, chief of the Justice Department’s organized crime and racketeering section, which is taking part in the case preparation, refused to discuss the matter.

The suit would be filed in federal District Court. If it succeeds, the court would appoint trustees who would manage the union, replacing its executive board. The trustees would report to the judge, who would have the authority to continue monitoring the union’s activities for as long as he deems necessary to ensure that it had rooted out criminal elements.

John R. Climaco, general counsel of the Teamsters and Presser’s personal defense attorney, declined to comment.

Crime Panel Report

The proposed Justice Department action goes well beyond actions recommended by the presidential organized crime commission. In its final report in 1985, the report said: “At both the international and local levels, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters obviously continues to suffer from the relationship with organized crime.

“Indeed, so pervasive has this relationship become that no single remedy is likely to restore even a measure of true union democracy and independent leadership to the IBT. Sustained commitment of governmental resources to dislodge organized crime from the IBT through a combination of criminal prosecutions, civil action and administrative proceedings is the only approach that offers even a modest hope of success in the long run.”

Referring to the trusteeship action against Local 560, the commission said that, if this case “is representative of the depths of the problem, systematic use of trusteeships by the courts may be necessary to prevent organized crime from continuing to do business as usual in the IBT.”

The move to assert federal control over the giant union would constitute the most sweeping step taken by authorities seeking to rid the Teamsters of criminal influence. It would be the latest in a series of turnarounds in the relationship between the Administration and the Teamsters, the only major union to support President Reagan’s election bids in 1980 and 1984.

Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III has removed himself from matters involving Presser because of contacts he had with him during the 1980 campaign and subsequently when Meese was counselor to the President.

The pending criminal case against Presser and two associates, international Vice President Harold Friedman and Cleveland recording secretary Anthony Hughes, is based on allegations that they siphoned off $700,000 in union funds over 10 years to pay the salaries of mob-related “ghost employees” who performed no work. All three have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them, which include labor racketeering and larceny.

If Presser, Friedman and Hughes are convicted of the racketeering charges, the Justice Department has said it will seek to strip them of their union posts.

Williams, who is serving a 10-year sentence for attempted bribery, testified at the Salerno trial that years ago “organized crime was filtered into the Teamsters Union.”

Testifying on videotape from his federal prison cell in Missouri, Williams said that James R. Hoffa, a former Teamster leader who disappeared in 1975 and is presumed to have been murdered, told him more than 30 years ago to follow the instructions of then-Kansas City crime boss Nicholas Civella. Williams at the time was a rising star in Midwest Teamster affairs.

Lonardo, the Cleveland mobster-turned-government-informant who was an earlier trial witness, testified that Salerno personally lined up votes on the union’s executive board for Williams in 1981 and for Presser in 1983 after Williams resigned because of his conviction.