Teamsters Investigator Steps Down
A former federal prosecutor hired by the Teamsters to investigate union corruption quit with his team Thursday, accusing President James P. Hoffa of resisting the efforts.
Hoffa rejected the accusations by Edwin H. Stier, who was hired nearly five years ago to run the union’s internal anticrime program. Hoffa called the charges about the union’s commitment to fighting organized crime “reckless and false allegations.”
Stier, who could not be reached at his New Jersey law office Thursday, said in his resignation letter that Hoffa had “backed away from the Teamsters’ anticorruption plan in the face of pressure from a few self-interested individuals.”
His team “began to experience active resistance” from Hoffa’s office over an investigation into possible corruption in Chicago that was based on “substantial reliable information that organized crime again threatens the union,” Stier said.
Instead of allowing that inquiry and others to continue, Teamsters officials turned over the information to the Justice Department and other authorities. Stier, in his letter, said that he had confidence in those investigators but that “such a shift in responsibility can only result in a loss of momentum and a disruption in continuity.”
If the union was trying to duck investigations, it would not have referred the allegations and information to government authorities, said Patrick Szymanski, the union’s general counsel.
Instead, Stier was angry that the union decided to avoid spending millions on an investigation into questionable allegations, Szymanski said. Also, the allegations involved people outside the union, which were out of Stier’s jurisdiction, he said.
Already, the union had spent $15 million on the program, of which about $8 million went to Stier and his team, he said. The project was created in 1999 to help persuade the government to drop its oversight of the union. The Teamsters agreed to allow government supervision to settle a 1989 lawsuit charging the union was controlled by organized crime.