Word: presser
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...accepted a settlement allowing the E.F. Hutton brokerage company to plead guilty to a massive check- kiting scheme, but declined to seek indictments of any of the firm's officers, although Hutton was fined $2 million. Meese has also had to defend the Justice Department's protection of Jackie Presser, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the only major union boss who supported Ronald Reagan's 1980 and 1984 presidential bids. In July the Justice Department decided not to prosecute Presser on charges of paying $274,000 to nonworking "ghost employees" at a Teamsters local in Cleveland...
...Attorney General Edwin Meese defended the Justice Department decision to protect Presser even if it means springing Uncle Allen. "Nobody's tried to cover this up," he told the Washington Post. "If anything, the prosecution has shown that they have faced up to their responsibilities to the accused and the court." Earlier this summer, Presser himself escaped indictment on the ghost-employee case when Justice officials ruled that there was insufficient evidence to convict him. They also cited Presser's role as an informant...
Matters grew even more complicated last week when officials close to the investigation claimed that the FBI had authorized Presser's payments to Friedman and several other ghost employees at Local 507. Washington sources said the FBI reasoned that the phantom payoffs would make it easier for Presser to gather information on Cleveland's organized crime groups. Questions lingered over how much the FBI had told Justice about Presser's secret dealings. The bureau's Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating agents' handling of the affair...
...Presser's immediate predecessor as Teamsters leader, Roy L. Williams, has not been as successful in eluding prosecution. Williams, who served as president of the union from 1981 to 1983, was convicted three years ago of attempting to bribe former Nevada Senator Howard Cannon in 1979 in return for the politician's help in opposing a trucking deregulation bill. Washington sources say that Presser was the Teamsters informant who first tipped the FBI to Williams' bribe offer. Last week Williams, 70, had his original prison sentence of 55 years reduced to ten years. He had pleaded for leniency because...
However handsomely Presser paid his ghost employees, the ample (300 lb.) Jackie drew a far fatter salary. An annual review of the union's books by the dissident Teamsters for a Democratic Union revealed that Presser paid himself $755,474 last year. That is roughly $185,000 more than the 1984 salary of Chrysler Chief Lee Iacocca, and about ten times the salary of Owen Bieber, head of the United Auto Workers. The T.D.U. says 74 other Teamsters officials made more than $100,000 last year...