New details surface in Stevens case

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, quickly turned a $5,000 Florida condo investment into a profit of more than $100,000 in an unconventional transaction that federal prosecutors hope to introduce at his trial on charges that he lied on financial disclosure forms.

The investment and other details of the Justice Department's case were disclosed late Thursday in court papers filed by prosecutors and defense lawyers gearing up for the first trial of a sitting U.S. senator in more than two decades. The trial is scheduled to start Sept. 24.

In the new documents, the government also dismissed Stevens' assertions that his conduct was shielded by the Constitution as a member of Congress, citing nine examples of the senator's "errands" and requests involving a former Alaska oil-services company that had nothing to do with protected lawmaking.

Among them: an intercepted phone call in which Stevens discusses how his son Ben, then the state Senate president, planned to push a bill favored by the oil industry as a prelude to natural-gas development.

The new filings go substantially further than a July indictment that charges Stevens with seven counts of failing to disclose gifts from 1999 through 2006. Most of the alleged gifts, including the renovation of the senator's Girdwood, Alaska, home, were from former oil-service company VECO and its politically active chairman, Bill Allen.

Allen and former VECO Vice President Rick Smith have pleaded guilty to bribing elected officials and are expected to testify at Stevens' trial.

The documents detailing the Florida condo transaction also allege that Stevens sought jobs from VECO for a son and a grandchild and a new Jeep Grand Cherokee for his daughter Lily in 2005.

The government says it plans to offer that evidence at trial as proof of crimes in the indictment. Stevens refused to comment.

The Florida transaction began in February 2001, when prosecutors said Stevens and an unidentified friend entered into a deal that resulted in a massive profit for the senator.

Stevens was required to put down 10 percent of the $360,000 sales price. Stevens invested $5,000, prosecutors alleged, and received a $31,000 interest-free loan from the friend to make up the difference. The friend was a partner in the development company, prosecutors wrote.

Within months, Stevens sold the condo for $515,000. He later repaid the $31,000 loan, prosecutors wrote, but never disclosed it on his Senate financial-disclosure statements, as required.

The vehicle transaction, in 2005, follows a 1999 deal referenced in Stevens' indictment. In the first deal, Stevens was looking for a car for his daughter Lily, then 18. He is accused of not reporting the trade of a 1964 Mustang worth $20,000, plus $5,000 cash, for a new, $44,000 Land Rover Discovery bought by Allen, for a net benefit of about $20,000.

Lily Stevens needed a new car in 2005, and her father returned to Allen, the government said in its filing Thursday.

A deal was made between Stevens' daughter and a VECO employee "for the purpose of hiding Allen's involvement in the transaction." Allen wrote a personal check to the employee for $35,000, who bought a new Jeep Grand Cherokee on July 15, 2005, for a little more than $34,000.

VECO shipped the vehicle to Seattle, paid the employee to fly to Seattle, pick up the car, and deliver it to Berkeley, Calif. Lily Stevens earned her law degree at the University of California, Berkeley, according to her wedding announcement in May.

Lily Stevens paid the VECO employee $13,000 plus her old car, valued at about $9,000, the government said.

In March 2006, after the government had begun tapping Allen's phones, Stevens asked a lobbyist to ask Allen for a job in Phoenix for one of his three sons. The lobbyist said Stevens mentioned Allen by name.

Allen ordered company officials to find a job for the son in Alaska in summer 2006, the government said. "Stevens' son accepted the position with VECO and also received a personal loan from Allen."