Arrested Senator Cites Concern For Granddaughter
By EDMUND H. MAHONY n Courant Staff Writer
June 2 2007
It was Sept. 7. Two men were talking quietly in Philip's Diner in Woodbury when the younger of the two pushed what looked like a bag of McDonald's hamburgers across the table.
The younger man was on the short side, balding, and he wore a goatee. He claimed to be employed by an indicted trash executive from Danbury who, just months earlier, had been accused of using New York mob muscle to carve up garbage-hauling routes in western Connecticut and upstate New York. In reality, he was an undercover agent for the FBI.
Across the table was state Sen. Louis C. DeLuca, the 73-year-old minority leader of the state Senate, gubernatorial confidant, and one of Connecticut's most senior Republicans. When DeLuca peeked into the fast food bag, he found it packed with $5,000 in cash.
There is some disagreement about the conversation that followed. DeLuca did not accept the bag of money. But, according to a law enforcement affidavit made public Friday in connection with DeLuca's arrest on a related threatening charge, there is no dispute that the money was supposed to be a bribe from indicted garbage executive James Galante, a man who had done favors for DeLuca in the past.
DeLuca was arrested by state prosecutors at about 2 p.m. Friday for one of those alleged favors. He was charged with conspiracy to commit second-degree threatening and is expected to plead guilty to the charge on Monday. DeLuca is accused of asking Galante to scare away a young man involved in an abusive relationship with his granddaughter. Although the threatening charge is not related to the attempted bribe, the events were presented by law enforcement Friday as two moments in a political morality tale involving a powerful trash industry figure and an influential senator.
The reason DeLuca gave for refusing to take the money in the bag, according to the affidavit, had less to do with moral indignation than fear of getting caught. The conversation preceding the offer of money concerned whether DeLuca would use his political influence to block government garbage industry regulations that Galante opposed.
He told the undercover agent he was "afraid of them guys [FBI agents] ... tracing things and [expletive] like that," according to the affidavit. Besides, he suggested, the money was of no consequence. He said he would work for Galante for free. He asked the undercover agent to tell the indicted Galante to "hang in there and I'll keep my eyes and ears open."
The portrayal of DeLuca by state and federal prosecutors Friday was a curious tangent to an otherwise straightforward FBI racketeering case. His prosecution is a joint state and federal law enforcement effort. The FBI prepared DeLuca's arrest warrant application and state prosecutors used it to arrest him after the senator's name turned up, unexpectedly, in an FBI effort to break up what federal prosecutors say is Galante's Mafia-backed monopoly on trash hauling in the affluent suburbs north and east of New York City.
Galante, who controls a network of trash-related businesses based in Danbury, was indicted with 28 others in June 2006 - three months before the cash was offered - in a racketeering conspiracy allegedly designed to eliminate competition and drive up prices. The indictment charges that Galante directed a group of mob-backed carters who used threats to eliminate competition and soak consumers with artificially inflated prices.
Galante denies it all. He admits being an aggressive businessman but says he has done nothing illegal. He is locked in a bruising legal battle with the Justice Department, which is trying to put him in prison and confiscate the $50 million trash empire he has been building since leaving high school and, later, military service, about 30 years ago. The disclosures about his relationship with DeLuca could become the basis for an additional charge against him.
The disclosures made Friday begin to trace a relationship between the enormously wealthy Galante, known for his generous financial support to many politicians, and DeLuca, who turned to Galante during a moment of intense emotional trauma two years ago.
In April 2005, according to several sources familiar with the events, DeLuca was distraught over a romantic relationship his granddaughter had formed with a man from the Waterbury area with a serious criminal record. DeLuca had tried repeatedly and without success to force the young woman to end the relationship. DeLuca confirmed as much Friday.
"Like anyone dealing with difficult personal issues, I would prefer that my family situation stay out of the public eye," he said in a written statement. "Yet as an elected official, I believe that my constituents and fellow legislators deserve an explanation. I tried to protect a family member who was vulnerable, who was in a physically abusive domestic relationship and who needed help. My family and I went to the police three times to get help for my relative, but the police said that they couldn't help because the victim wouldn't file a complaint."
So DeLuca called Galante. He later told the FBI that he believed Galante was "on the fringes" of organized crime.
DeLuca's relationship with Galante stretched back at least to 2001, when DeLuca's Italian-American Legislative Caucus honored Galante as its Italian-American Man of the Year. Characteristically, Galante responded to the honor with a generous donation to the organization's scholarship fund.
Over the years, Galante has become a political mother lode. Besides supporting numerous political candidacies, he paid for a new athletic field at his son's high school outside of Danbury. He has established a charity for families of U.S. servicemen. He financed an auto-racing team and installed a minor league hockey team in Danbury's long-dormant ice arena, although he is accused, among other things, of providing no-show garbage jobs to hockey players in order to circumvent the minor league salary cap.
According to the affidavit, DeLuca asked to meet Galante for breakfast on April 5, 2005, at Philip's Diner, down the road from DeLuca's home in Woodbury. The FBI was listening through a wiretap when Galante telephoned his office to report he would be late for work because he was meeting DeLuca.
The affidavit says that DeLuca later admitted that he explained to Galante "that a member of [his] family had been the victim of domestic violence." During the discussion, according to the affidavit, Galante scribbled on a slip of paper and passed DeLuca a note, asking: "Do you want me to have someone pay him a visit?" DeLuca answered yes, according to the affidavit, and provided Galante with the Waterbury man's name and address.
When Galante got to his office after the breakfast meeting, the affidavit says, he told two "associates" that he wanted the Waterbury man "bitch slapped." The affidavit translated that instruction to mean that "the target should be physically assaulted." FBI wiretaps also captured the associates discussing the instructions they had received from Galante, the affidavit says.
Galante brought the note he had passed to DeLuca back to his office; the FBI found it during a raid three months later.
At a press conference Friday, U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor implied that Galante may have kept the note to use as future leverage against DeLuca.
"It does beg the question: Why would Mr. Galante have held onto that note?" O'Connor said. "And you wonder, was it an effort to perhaps use it in some future capacity? I don't know. ... But that's the kind of stuff we have to worry about and that's why we have to take these kinds of relationships very seriously."
The Galante associates were trying to track down the Waterbury man within days of Galante's meeting with DeLuca, the affidavit says. But FBI agents prevented what they considered a likely assault by arranging to have a state police officer appear conspicuously outside the home of one of the associates.
"Thus DeLuca's desire to have the target `visited' was successfully thwarted by the intervention of state and federal authorities," the affidavit says. "In a subsequent conversation, however, [Galante] told DeLuca that the target had been visited and there `was a lot of screaming.'"
DeLuca said in his written statement Friday that he never really wanted the Waterbury man to be hurt.
"I hoped that a meeting would have been all that was necessary to convince this person to stop the abuse," DeLuca said. "I did not want violence, or for the perpetrator to get hurt. I just wanted the physical abuse of my relative to stop. The meeting with the abuser never occurred, and the perpetrator of the abuse was never threatened or injured. Nonetheless, it was a terrible decision on my part to seek Mr. Galante's involvement."
It was nearly a year and one half later, in September 2006, that the FBI decided to dangle the hamburger bag full of money in front of DeLuca to test the depth of his obligation to Galante. It happened over two meetings, both of which are described in the affidavit. During the first, on September 5, the conversation seemed promising.
DeLuca told the undercover operative that "anytime [Galante] needs anything, within my power, that I can do, I will do." Later in the conversation, DeLuca said he was "shocked" when Galante was indicted because "he is not a careless guy." When the undercover operative suggested that Galante got indicted because someone "spilled something," DeLuca replied that "it had to be some bastard, but, you know, he's not a careless man."
Believing that the undercover operative was a Galante employee, DeLuca left instructions on how to arrange future meetings "if you guys need me anymore." The best way to make contact, DeLuca said, was through a third party because his "relationship" with Galante was a secret.
DeLuca met the undercover operative a second time, on September 7. He promised that "I'll keep my eyes open."
"And understand that anything that could hurt [Galante], I'll try to blunt it as best I can." He promised to be helpful in killing legislation or state regulations that could adversely affect Galante's business interests. "I can't influence it at this point, because it's out of my hands," DeLuca told the undercover operative, "but if it gets to the point where I have appointments, I can influence it that way. You know ... if it's a commission ... generally I get an appointment."
After he refused the money, FBI agents, clearly identifying themselves, paid him a visit. DeLuca lied, telling them that the purpose of his originally meeting with Galante had been to try to obtain a job for the Waterbury man who was involved with his granddaughter.
But when the agents got DeLuca in the FBI office in Meriden two weeks later, on Sept. 21, he came clean. He said he wanted Galante to scare the man. He said he was forced to turn to Galante because his repeated pleas for assistance to the police had been rebuffed.
Sources close to DeLuca say that the despairing senator had brought photos of his bruised and battered granddaughter to the police, but they wouldn't do anything because the granddaughter refused to file a complaint against her boyfriend.
Courant Staff Writer Jon Lender contributed to this story.
Contact Edmund H. Mahony at emahony@courant.com.
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