Michael Rigas Too Busy for Fraud, Lawyer Says

Former Adelphia Vice President Michael Rigas was a detached executive, too busy managing the company’s cable television systems to have joined in the misdeeds that crippled the company, his attorney said Tuesday in a closing argument in Rigas’ criminal trial.

Defense attorney Andrew Levander didn’t dispute the most serious fraud charges against the Rigases, but rather sought to distinguish his client from his father and brother, arguing that Michael Rigas was responsible for the physical operations of the No. 5 cable television company, not its finances.

“Michael Rigas had nothing to do with the accounting and finance departments that are at the center of this case,” Levander said.

Levander’s statements came after nearly four months of testimony in the trial of the three Rigas family members, who are charged with concealing $2.3 billion in off-balance-sheet loans and looting Adelphia Communications Corp. of more than $100 million. The company collapsed into bankruptcy in 2002.

John Rigas, the 79-year-old family patriarch who founded the company in 1952, and his sons face a minimum of 15 to 20 years in prison if convicted. Jury deliberations are expected to start Friday.

Levander said only one member of Adelphia’s accounting department could recall ever having a conversation about financial matters with Michael Rigas, and none could recall him setting foot on the department floor.

Rather, the members of the accounting department, many of whom cooperated with the government in hopes of winning reduced sentences, ridiculed him for his supposed lack of financial sophistication.

“Michael Rigas is supposedly looting the company and cooking its books without ever having anything to do with financial matters,” Levander told the jury. “Does this make sense to you?”

Levander depicted his 50-year-old client as a Boy Scout who submitted receipts for the smallest business expenses and never partook in personal extravagances such as company condominiums in Cancun, Mexico, golf junkets to Hilton Head, S.C., or recreational travel on the company jet.

Although entitled to a new company car every year, Michael Rigas drove the same Toyota from 1987 to 1996, before trading it in for another Toyota. On his last day at Adelphia, he handed in his keys, Levander said.

The prosecution did show he had used the corporate jet once: to accompany his father to the Mayo Clinic for cancer treatment.

“It proves he was a good son, not a criminal,” Levander said.