https://www.newspapers.com/article/st-louis-post-dispatch-8191981-fratia/133749941/ST.LOUIS POST-DISPATCH Wed., Aug. 19, 1981 11
A Testifies Giordano Controlled Roy Williams
By Ronald J. Lawrence Of th Post-Dispatch Staff ,
LAS VEGAS, Nev. A former hoodlum has testified that Anthony Giordano, the late St. Louis underworld boss, wielded considerable influence in" the Teamsters union and "controlled" Roy L. Williams, who was elected president of the Teamsters . in June. Aladena "Jimmy the Weasel" Fratianno now an important government witness in organized crime prosecutions made the allegations in a court-authorized deposition taken in a libel suit by Rancho La Costa, a resort near San Diego, against Penthouse magazine. The magazine had carried a story alleging that the resort was built by, and was a haven for, organized crime figures.
Fratianno is to be a witness for Rancho La Costa when the case goes to trial in September. In his deposition, recently obtained by the Post-Dispatch, Fratianno made these other allegations : Underworld leaders in four Midwestern cities shared the alleged influence over Williams before he became Teamsters president, but it was Giordano who had final authority over matters concerning the Teamsters. The Detroit underworld exercised its Influence in the Teamsters union through James R. Hoffa, the former Teamsters president who disappeared in 1975. The Detroit mob has blood and working relationships with the Giordano crime family.
Fratianno said he introduced Hoffa to Chicago syndicate leaders in Los Angeles in 1952. Fratianno said it was Hoffa's debut in organized crime. The St. Louis mob had a secret interest in a Las Vegas hotel and gambling casino. Fratianno did not identity the hotel.
Giordano, who died last Aug. 29, also "controlled" former St. Louis lawyer Morris A. Shenker, principal owner and officer of the Dunes Hotel and Country Club in Las Vegas. Shenker, Fratianno said, had negotiated millions of dollars in loans from the Teamsters union pension fund.
Shenker emphatically denied Fratianno's allegations. Interviewed in Las Vegas, Shenker said: "This guy (Fratianno) doesn't know what he is talking about. Nobody controls me, especially Tony Giordano." Shenker said he saw Giordano only infrequently, and he denied receiving many Teamsters loans. "This is a lot of malarkey," Shenker said.
Deposits must remain to maturity or gift must be returned.' We reserve the right to limit quantities or refuse any account. Repeated attempts to reach Williams for comment were unsuccessful. Fratianno, a self-confessed mob executioner, was a ranking California gangrter in 1977 when he became a government informant. He said he was a "formally initiated" a "made guy of La Casa Nostra," or the Mafia. His testimony in the last several years has resulted in the convictions of several major hoodlums on the East and West coasts, including Funzi Tieri, avcrime family boss of New York City.
Fratianno is in hiding under the federal Witness Protection Program. Giordano's importance in organized crime across the country has become known only in recent years. The Post-Dispatch has reported that Giordano exercised control over major criminal activities by the Denver underworld. Intelligence sources said he acted with the authority of the "commissione" a sort of board of directors that oversees crime on a nationwide basis. Authorities believe that Giordano derived much of his national influence through the Detroit mob, some of whose leaders were related to him.
The Detroit crime family has been represented on the "commissione" for many years. In his deposition for the Rancho La Costa-Penthouse case, Fratianno was asked whether he knew Williams of Kansas City, then a Teamsters union international vice president. He said he did, and then he was asked whether any "Cosa Nostra members run Roy Williams." Fratianno replied: "There are three people, four people (who) go to Roy Williams when they want something." Fratianno identified them as Joseph "Joey Doves" Aiuppa, head of the Chicago mob; Nick Civella, Kansas City underworld boss; Frank Balisterie, Milwaukee crime chieftain; and Giordano. Fratianno identified Giordano as "boss of La Cosa Nostra in St. Louis." Later in the deposition, Fratianno was asked whether he knew Shenker.
He replied that he did, saying that he first met Shenker at Murrietta Hot Springs, another resort near San Diego that Shenker owned and that was bought with Teamsters union pension fund loans. This dialogue followed: "Did you and Mr. Shenker discuss people whom you knew in common?" "Yes, we did," Fratianno replied. ' "Who were the people that you and Morris Shenker knew in common?" "Well, we discussed Tony Giordano," Fratianno responded. "We discussed Hoffa.
We discussed a lot of people that we knew in common." Shenker told the Post-Dispatch that he had met Fratianno three times, initially when Fratianno was trying to buy land at Murrietta Hot Springs. In the deposition, Fratianno also was asked whether Giordano "controlled" anybody in the Teamsters. Fratianno replied: "Yes. He controlled Shenker." "Anybody else?" he was asked. Fratianno responded by identifying Williams.
When asked who controlled Hoffa, Fratianno replied that the Detroit crime family did. Fratianno later was asked again about who controlled Shenker, and he again identified Giordano. "Did Nick Civella of Kansas City have anything to do with Morris Shenker?" Fratianno was asked. "Well, they do business together," Fratianno said. "But Nick gets it more or less with Joe (apparently Aiuppa), but with Tony Giordano's permission." 17 Accused Of Abusing : Teamster Pension Fund ;: WASHINGTON (UPI) The Labor Department is continuing its crackdown against alleged abuses of the scandal-ridden Teamsters Central States pension fund.
Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan brought civil suit Tuesday against 17 trustees, attorneys and agents of the fund, charging them with violating financial obligations in a scheme involving a $7 million loan for land development on Florida's Gulf Coast. In papers filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida at Panama City, the defendants were charged with purchasing undeveloped land for $6.7 million in a 1977 foreclosure sale, when they knew the market value was considerably lower. Donovan is seeking reimbursement of an undesignated amount lost to the fund and a court order prohibiting future violations. Named in the action were seven current trustees of the pension fund, as well as its former executive director, Daniel Shannon.
Teamsters union President Roy Lee Williams, a one-time trustee of the fund, was not involved in the suit. He was forced by the Carter administration along with other top union officials to resign as fund trustees because of past alleged abuses of fiduciary responsibility. The new suit centers on loans of $2 million and $5 million made by the Chicago-based pension plan in 1974 to Indico Corp. The loans were secured by. undeveloped land along the Gulf of Mexico in Bay County, Fla., known as Pinnacle Port, ;; Phases II and III.
The suit identified the co-owners of the corporation as - Mayer Morganroth and Martin Kopitz. Indico, according to the suit, defaulted on both loans on or about Jan. 1, 1976, and in November of that year the pension plan initiated legal proceedings, winning a $9.6 million judgment against Indico in August 1977. The suit alleged, however, that when Indico failed to pay the amount due, attorney Clinton E. Foster, representing the fund, purchased the land back in open bidding for $6.7 million.
Department Solicitor T. Timothy Ryan Jr. alleges in the suit that in making both the opening and final purchase bid for the land greatly in excess of market value, "all defendants, both trustee and non-trustee, imprudently ignored certain information in their possession . . .
that the actual fair market value of Phases II and III at the time of the foreclosure sale was significantly less than either the opening or final bid." Ryan alleged that on Sept. 6, 1977, all non-trustee defendants except Foster "met and decided that the opening bid on behalf of the plan . . . should be opened at $5 millon and could go up to $7 million." Whites In Richmond, Va., Allege Bias In Redistricting WASHINGTON (AP) For the first time, whites are trying to take advantage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by asking the federal government to void a change in local election laws that they say discriminates in favor of blacks.
Four white members of the Richmond, Va., City Council, along with 25 white business and civic leaders, asked the Justice Department Tuesday to block a new redistricting plan for the council. The whites contended that the council's five black members unfairly drafted the plan to guarantee a permanent black majority. During the last 16 years, black civil rights groups have come to view the act as the nation's most important civil rights law, arguing that it has allowed thousands of blacks in the South to register, vote and gain political power. They are trying to persuade Congress to renew the act before it expires in August 1982. Many white Southerners have argued that the law is no longer needed.
