Print

Mail

wiki links

Former Alaskan chief of staff agrees to enter guilty plea

NY Times News Service, NEW YORK

Former Alaskan governor Frank Murkowski's chief of staff agreed on Monday to plead guilty to concealing donations made to Murkowski's 2006 re-election campaign by an influential private contractor at the center of a wide-ranging federal investigation into Alaska politics and government.

The aide, James Clark, who served under the governor during his single term in office between December 2002 and December 2006, agreed to plead guilty to a single felony charge of fraud for not reporting campaign donations made by the VECO Corp, an engineering and oil-field services company.

Court documents filed Monday said Clark arranged for VECO to pay US$68,500 for polling and political consultants for Murkowski's campaign beginning in April 2006 and continuing into August "in a manner so that the public would be deceived and the payments would not be disclosed, as required by law."

The former governor lost his bid for re-election.

The court documents said Clark had solicited help from two VECO executives, Bill Allen and Richard Smith, who pleaded guilty to bribery and other charges last year. The documents said the executives supported efforts by the governor to alter the way the state taxed oil companies and to build a natural gas pipeline.

Clark's plea comes as many of Alaska's most prominent elected officials are under scrutiny for their ties to VECO. Senator Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator in history, and Representative Don Young, the state's sole House member, are both being investigated.

David Dittman, a pollster who said in an interview that his company was the one referred to as "Polling Company A" in the court documents, said the US$20,000 he received from VECO had come before Murkowski officially became a candidate and so did not violate state campaign laws requiring disclosure.

"There wasn't anything wrong with that," Dittman said.

He said it was possible, however, that the payment violated state laws against making gifts of a certain amount to elected officials.
This story has been viewed 1170 times.