BY MARTÍN KOPPEL
A U.S. court-appointed board expelled Teamsters president
Ronald Carey from the union July 27.
The so-called Independent Review Board justified its action on grounds that Carey should have known - even if he didn't actually know - that some $1.4 million was illegally diverted from union funds to his re-election campaign by some of his campaign aides. The board also ousted William Hamilton, former Teamsters director of governmental affairs.
The expulsion of the Teamsters president is the latest in a decades-long series of federal government interventions in the internal affairs of the biggest union in the United States. The government has justified its interference in the name of ridding the Teamsters of corruption and ties to the Mafia.
Former FBI and CIA chief William Webster wrote the board's ruling, which was also signed by Grant Crandall, a lawyer. The third board member, former federal judge Frederick Lacey, issued a separate statement claiming Carey knew about the diversion of funds, to which three Carey campaign aides have pleaded guilty.
The board, which has wide powers to supervise the Teamsters' day-to-day affairs, was set up as part of a 1989 "consent decree" imposed on the union by the U.S. Justice Department in exchange for dropping a civil racketeering suit against Teamsters officials. The decree also gave the government the authority to monitor the union's elections.
Carey was elected Teamsters president in 1991 and won reelection in 1996 in a narrow victory over rival James Hoffa. In August 1997, just days after 185,000 Teamsters won a national strike against United Parcel Service, Barbara Zack Quindel, a Clinton administration official appointed to oversee the union, annulled Carey's December 1996 reelection and launched an investigation against him for improper fund- raising. Later, another government overseer, Kenneth Conboy, barred Carey from the federally ordered rerun election.
A third federal monitor, former prosecutor Michael Cherkasky, ruled he would allow Hoffa to run for union president, although he claimed Hoffa had carried out questionable fund-raising practices in the 1996 election campaign.
Meanwhile, a federal grand jury in New York is carrying out an investigation against Carey in relation to his campaign's fund raising.
Both Carey and Hoffa have called on the U.S. government to investigate each other. Hoffa cheered the federal board's expulsion of Carey from the union.