Panel Told of Mafia Control of Teamsters

Former Mafia leader Angelo Lonardo, in his first testimony to Congress, said Friday that organized crime has dominated the Teamsters Union through many of the union’s international vice presidents and delegates to the Teamsters’ national convention.

In elaborating on allegations that he has made to the FBI and at two federal trials, Lonardo told a Senate investigations subcommittee that the Mafia, through these electors, has handpicked all the union’s presidents in recent years, including the current president, Jackie Presser.

Lonardo, 77, reputed to be the No. 2 Mafioso in Cleveland when he became a government witness in 1983, said that his own organized crime “family” paid about $1,500 a month for several years in the 1970s to Presser’s father, William Presser, an Ohio Teamsters leader who died in 1981. The funds were part of $40,000 a month collected by the Cleveland Mafia as its share of money illegally skimmed from Las Vegas casinos controlled by organized crime, Lonardo said.

When asked by Sen. William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.) if the younger Presser received any payments, Lonardo replied: “That I don’t know, sir.” He said that the elder Presser was paid because, as a trustee of the union’s Central States pension fund, he had obtained loans from the fund to help the mob buy controlling interests in two casinos.

Lonardo, reputedly the highest-ranking Mafia leader ever to defect to the FBI, testified to the Senate Governmental Affairs permanent investigations subcommittee as part of the panel’s review of organized crime 25 years after New York mobster Joseph Valachi, appearing before the same subcommittee, ripped the veil off the Mafia’s inner structure.

Lonardo became a government witness after being convicted of conspiracy to distribute narcotics in 1983 and receiving a life sentence. Now paroled as a protected government witness, he told subcommittee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) that he defected because “I knew I would never get out of there alive.”

Teamsters general counsel John R. Climaco, reached for comment on Lonardo’s testimony, said that any allegation of Mafia influence over the union “is pure fiction.”

“Both the FBI and the Justice Department know that no such influence currently exists,” Climaco said.

Presser, who is awaiting criminal trial on payroll-padding charges, is being defended by Climaco on grounds that the FBI authorized him to keep non-working Mafia-related employees on his payroll. Presser was a secret informant for the FBI on organized crime matters for more than 10 years and reported regularly to his FBI “handlers,” Climaco contends.

Lonardo was vague on his charge that the Mafia has influence over top Teamsters officials, declining to identify any union vice presidents or to estimate the number of those influenced. He said that he knew of such influence largely through personal visits with Chicago mobsters Joey Aiuppa and Jackie Cerone and New York Mafia chieftain Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno.

When asked if a majority of Teamsters officials had organized crime connections, he replied: “I can’t answer that.” He testified behind an opaque screen to avoid being photographed.

Key Source of Information

Lonardo has been a source of information for the Justice Department in preparation of a civil lawsuit, expected to be filed soon, to place the Teamsters under a court-supervised federal trusteeship on grounds that the union has been corrupted by organized crime.