Overseer Named for Teamsters Election

Federal prosecutors turned to a former New York City crime buster Tuesday to supervise next year’s national Teamsters election and investigate the campaign finances of presidential candidate James P. Hoffa.

Michael G. Cherkasky, longtime chief of investigations for New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, was appointed federal elections officer by U.S. District Judge David Edelstein to oversee the rerun of the union’s scandal-plagued elections. Cherkasky is chief operating officer of Kroll Associates Inc., an international private investigations firm.

Nearly a decade after the Justice Department filed civil racketeering charges against the union in an effort to rid it of corruption, the federal government once again finds itself all but running the union of 1.4 million members in the wake of another wave of corruption, this time by the reform elements it helped bring into office.

Two weeks ago, federal prosecutors named an independent auditor to oversee day-to-day financial operations of the union with veto power over union spending.

Cherkasky adds a new dimension to the role of the government elections officer. A veteran prosecutor with a string of high-profile cases--from mobster John Gotti to the Bank of Credit and Commerce International--on his list of credits, Cherkasky replaces Barbara Zack Quindel, a Milwaukee labor lawyer who supervised last year’s Teamsters elections.

Quindel threw out Teamsters President Ron Carey’s narrow election victory over Hoffa last year after uncovering what she called a network of illegal financing schemes by the Carey campaign. Three Carey campaign operatives have since pleaded guilty to criminal fraud charges involving campaign finances.

Last month, former federal judge Kenneth Conboy disqualified Carey from seeking reelection and a special government-appointed Independent Review Board within the union charged Carey with bringing reproach to the union, the first formal step toward seeking his removal from office.

On Tuesday, Carey, who has taken a leave of absence while he fights the charges, appealed his disqualification in U.S. District Court in New York. Reid Weingarten, Carey’s attorney, said the case against Carey was based on circumstantial evidence, much of it on the word of a convicted felon.