WASHINGTON – Federal prosecutors during last week’s trial of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens presented records from the Senate FCU to try to discredit Stevens’ and his wife’s claims that they–and not an oil services company-- paid for $250,000 in improvements to their home in Girdwood, Alaska, they call "the chalet."
Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator fighting for his political life, claims his wife Catherine paid all the family bills, including those related to the chalet, which was renovated by oil services firm VECO.
The trial of the five-term senator comes less than three weeks before Stevens’ toughest election challenge in years, from the Democratic mayor of Anchorage, Mark Begich, and is one of three corruption trials ongoing in Congress. Also fending off corruption charges are congressman Rick Renzi, a Republican from Arizona and William Jefferson, Democrat from Louisiana.
Prosecutors in the Stevens case showed last week that family bills were regularly paid not by Catherine Stevens, but instead by a Senate staffer out of the Stevens’ joint Senate FCU account. Catherine Stevens testified last week that Barbara Flanders, a $125,000-a-year aide in the senator’s office, was put in charge of paying personal bills, including utilities, insurance, credit card and other bills for the chalet.
Senate FCU, located in the basement of the Senate office building, has emerged as the key financial institution for senators, with a third of members maintaining a personal account, and almost every senator having an office account with the credit union.
An official with the credit union would not comment last week, saying members’ records are confidential.
Prosecutors say Sen. Stevens, 84, concealed hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and favors from VECO and its owner Bill Allen, and they are using the credit union records to try and prove their case. Records from the senator’s credit union account, for example, detail payments Stevens made to keep a race horse he owned in partnership with Allen, and checks from the credit union to pay off a mortgage on the chalet Stevens had with Wells Fargo. Flanders was one of two Stevens aides with authority to make payments form the account.
Stevens testified last week he was unaware of the cost of the renovations made to the chalet because his wife paid all of the bills. But after Catherine Stevens testified she paid the bills, prosecutors provided the credit union records to discredit her claim.
Catherine Stevens also admitted that she never hired a contractor to build the deck that was added on the front of the house, never got a bill for that work and was never certain who had done that work.
Sen. Stevens testified on Friday and is expected to appear again Monday, before the defense and prosecution present summations.
