Ex-IBF President Lee Found Guilty on Six of 38 Counts

It wasn’t the clean knockout federal prosecutors had hoped for, but they still won a solid decision Thursday when a jury found International Boxing Federation founder and former president Bob Lee guilty on six of 38 counts in a New Jersey racketeering trial.

The 66-year-old Lee, charged with taking $338,000 in bribes from promoters and managers to fix rankings and sanction fights, was found guilty of tax evasion, money laundering and interstate travel in aid of racketeering.

The jury, after deliberating 15 days at the end of a four-month trial, found Lee guilty on three counts of bribery in his dealings with Francisco Fernandez of Colombia, the IBF’s South American representative. Lee was acquitted, however, on charges stemming from improper payments made to him by promoters Bob Arum, Cedric Kushner and Dino Duva.

Lee, who could be sentenced to a term in excess of 20 years, will most likely be given three years, according to U.S. Atty. Robert Cleary.

Lee’s son, 38-year-old Robert Jr., was acquitted on all nine charges against him.

Federal prosecutors will press forward in their civil case against Lee, according to Cleary, a suit in which they are seeking a permanent injunction to keep the Lees from any involvement in the IBF while also attempting to recover the $338,000. Figuring treble damages and attorneys’ fees, that could cost the Lees more than $1 million.

The Lees have been removed from the IBF via a preliminary injunction with the organization currently being run by a court-appointed monitor.

“When you get a conviction of six felony counts on a guy who is getting on in years,” Cleary said, “I think that could act as a general deterrent. Only time will tell if it helps clean up the sport.”

Sources close to the trial have said all along that Lee has been told prosecutors would go easier on him if he turned over any evidence he had of wrongdoing on the part of promoter Don King, an unindicted co-conspirator in the case.

King has maintained his innocence.

Asked after Thursday’s verdict if there was still interest in striking a deal with Lee in regard to King, Cleary said, “Lee’s amount of cooperation is up to him.”

Much of the prosecution case rested on conversations with Lee that were secretly recorded by C. Douglas Beavers, the longtime chairman of the IBF ratings committee, who became a government informant with immunity.

While Beavers was on the stand for 22 days, prosecutors played 80 audiotapes and three videotapes for jurors. Two of the videos showed Beavers and Lee passing cash in a Portsmouth, Va., hotel room.

The FBI confronted Lee after the third videotaped meeting on Oct. 21, 1998, but the former Union County homicide investigator and deputy state boxing commissioner was not interested in making a deal.

The defense tried to show that Lee was the victim of a “selective prosecution” of boxing’s only black-run sanctioning group, portraying Beavers, who is white, as a racist.

Lee attorney Gerald Krovatin said promoters testified against Lee to hurt King, and maintained that Lee had a right to accept “gifts” and “gratuities” from business associates.

Of the 38 witnesses, the only big-name fighter to appear was then-IBF welterweight champion Felix Trinidad, who testified for the defense that he never made payoffs, or had anyone make payoffs, to ensure good treatment by the IBF.

The name of Trinidad, now the World Boxing Assn. super-welterweight champion, never came up in the payoffs described in court.

The Lee verdict comes only 24 hours after the Nevada State Athletic Commission fined Arum $100,000 and put restrictions on his promoter’s license for the next six months after Arum admitted in testimony in New Jersey that he had agreed in 1994 to pay Lee $200,000 to get the IBF to sanction a heavyweight title fight between George Foreman and Axel Schulz.

Was Arum simply unlucky by having his hearing one day before the jury acquitted Lee of bribery charges in his dealings with Arum?

No, said Kirk Hendrick, Nevada’s chief deputy attorney general.

“Bob Arum is a privileged licensee in this state,” Hendrick said. “Whether or not the factual circumstances [in New Jersey] fit the definition of bribery or extortion was not a concern to us. What was a concern were the allegations surrounding payment, which brought discredit to the sport of boxing.”

Hendrick and Arum had both expressed the hope at Wednesday’s hearing that the New Jersey trail would begin true reform in boxing. After Thursday’s verdict, Hendrick maintained that feeling.

“What we hope,” he said, “is that this encourages others to shed more light on the practices of, not only the IBF, but of all sanctioning organizations.”