Former Teamsters Prez Indicted

Former Teamsters President Ron Carey was indicted Thursday by a federal jury in Manhattan on perjury and false statement charges.

Prosecutors said the charges stemmed from investigations into illegal efforts by his campaign to raise money for his 1996 re-election campaign for the union's presidency.

A seven-count indictment charged Carey with making false statements to an election officer, the chief investigator for the Independent Review Board and the Independent Review Board itself, prosecutors said in a release.

The board was investigating allegations that the Carey campaign engaged in illegal fundraising during the campaign.

The probes were focused on the connection between a total of $885,000 in donations from the union's general treasury funds to Citizen Action, Project Vote, the National Council of Senior Citizens and the American Federation of Labor/Congress of Industrial Organizations and contributions to the Carey campaign.

A message left with a lawyer for Carey in Washington was not immediately returned.

Carey's 1996 re-election over James P. Hoffa was overturned after investigators found that his campaign had improperly benefited from donations the union made to third-party political organizations.

Carey, 64, of Queens, was disqualified from a new election after it was found he participated in the diversion of about $885,000 in union funds to his 1996 campaign. Carey has maintained that he was unaware of the scheme.

Hoffa lost to Carey by less than 4 percentage points in the 1996 election.

After the disqualification, Carey took a leave as president and a federal auditor was named to oversee the finances of the 1.4-million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the nation's largest private-sector union. Later, Carey was expelled from the union.

William W. Hamilton Jr., the former Teamsters director of governmental affairs, was sentenced to three years in prison after he was found guilty by a jury of participating in the scheme.

Three consultants to Carey's campaign have pleaded guilty in federal court and were awaiting sentencing.

If convicted, Carey faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison on each of the seven counts in the indictment.