Contractor who hired Connecticut school-building chief's daughter gets probation, not prison
A federal judge in Bridgeport on Wednesday sentenced Antonietta DiBenedetto Roy, owner of Construction Advocacy Professionals, to two years of probation for conspiring to bribe Konstantinos Diamantis, the former head of Connecticut's school construction program.
Roy had admitted to a bribery conspiracy charge that carries up to five years in prison. Federal guidelines called for two to two and a half years, CT Mirror reported. U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill instead ordered probation, starting with six months under curfew. The Hartford Courant reported she must also do 50 hours of community service.
Prosecutors and her lawyer both asked for leniency. No defendant cooperated before Roy did, and prosecutors told the court the counts tied to her firm would have been hard to prove without her records and testimony. According to prosecution filings described by the Courant, she paid Diamantis $26,457.92 in all, much of it sent to his daughter on his orders, and hired the daughter at a rate prosecutors called inflated. In return he steered school work in Tolland, New Britain and Hartford to her company. Her lawyer, Craig Raabe, said the firm has since lost clients and work.
Diamantis controlled a $10 billion state fund for school construction, the Courant reported. A jury convicted him on 21 federal counts last year. He fled to Greece before sentencing, and Underhill gave him seven years in prison in absentia. At Wednesday's hearing the judge put the blame for the scheme on Diamantis and told Roy it was a shame she did the right thing only after doing the wrong one.
John Duffy and Sal Monarca, masonry contractors who were also witnesses against Diamantis, face sentencing later this month.
Why it matters: Prosecutors counted a job for an official's daughter as part of the bribe. The contractor who cooperated first stayed out of prison, but her firm still lost clients, and two masonry contractors face sentencing this month.
Sources
- Diamantis witness spared prison in federal bribery case. ‘I’m ashamed and embarrassed’Hartford Courant (via Yahoo News), Nov 4
- Contractor who hired Kosta Diamantis' daughter gets probationCT Mirror, Nov 4