Helmsleys, 2 Others Plead Innocent to Tax Charges
Hotel tycoons Harry and Leona Helmsley and two of their former financial advisers proclaimed their innocence Thursday as the state accused them of tax evasion, conspiracy, scheming to defraud and falsifying business records.
The Helmsleys, Joseph V. Licari, senior vice president and chief financial officer of their Helmsley Enterprises, and Frank J. Turco, vice president and chief of financial services for Helmsley Hotels, appeared before Acting New York State Supreme Court Justice Carol Berkman, as a 188-count state indictment was handed up by a grand jury.
Berkman denied the request by the state attorney general’s office that the Helmsleys each post $1-million bonds and instead released them and the two other defendants on their own recognizance. The defendants will be arraigned in U.S. District Court here next week on a similar, 47-count federal tax evasion indictment that was also returned Thursday.
Earlier, the Helmsleys, whose $5-billion real estate empire includes 27 hotels and the Empire State Building, surrendered at New York Atty. Gen. Robert Abrams’ office, where they were fingerprinted, photographed and booked. The Helmsleys arrived in a silver stretch limousine about 7:40 a.m. Clad in a bright red dress, Leona Helmsley linked arms with her husband and smiled as the couple entered Abrams’ office building.
The indictment, word of which had leaked out earlier this week, charges that between June, 1983, and April, 1986, about $4 million in Helmsley company funds were used to refurbish the couple’s $11-million, 28-acre estate in Greenwich, Conn., which they purchased June 20, 1983. The expenditures included a $1-million pool enclosure for one of the estate’s two pools that added a breakfast room and marble dance floors on the roof, $500,000 worth of jade artwork, more than $130,000 for an indoor-outdoor music system and more than $370,000 in landscaping.
The indictment alleges that these expenses were paid by various hotels and properties owned by the Helmsleys and that the four defendants falsified business records to disguise the expenses as corporate rather than personal. The indictment also accuses the Helmsleys of filing false personal, corporate and partnership returns with New York authorities.
In addition, the indictment claims that the couple’s Park Lane hotel paid for a $45,000 silver clock Leona Helmsley gave her husband for his birthday in 1984 that was designed in the shape of the Helmsley Building on Park Avenue. The same hotel was also billed for “uniforms,” which allegedly were a white lace and pink satin dress and jacket and a white chiffon skirt that Abrams said were worth about $2,000.
The defendants were accused of conspiracy to commit extortion by demanding free goods and services from contractors doing business with the company. Helmsley employees allegedly were instructed to prepare false and fraudulent travel vouchers to generate cash for Leona Helmsley.
If convicted on the state charges, the defendants face up to four years in prison and fines of $5,000 on each felony count.
