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Trial of IBF founder set to begin
Posted: Friday April 07, 2000 01:15 AM
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- Some of boxing's biggest names, including promoter Don King and former heavyweight champion George Foreman, will be heard in a federal courtroom over the next three months during the trial of IBF founder Robert W. Lee Sr. Lee and others in the group are accused of taking $338,000 in bribes to rig his organization's boxer rankings, which are critical to how much a fighter can earn. Opening arguments are to begin Friday. Prosecutors say jurors can expect to hear several weeks of testimony from a key informant, C. Douglas Beavers, the IBF's longtime rankings chairman. Beavers began cooperating with investigators after being approached by the FBI in May 1997, and ultimately taped dozens of conversations with Lee which prosecutors and Beavers maintain demonstrate that favorable treatment stemmed from payoffs. The U.S. attorney's office has agreed not to prosecute Beavers and granted him immunity. FBI agents also secretly videotaped three meetings Lee had with Beavers in a Virginia hotel room. U.S. District Judge John W. Bissell on Thursday barred lawyers from mentioning the videos in opening statements. Videotapes from two of the meetings will probably not be allowed to be shown to the jury, Bissell said in response to a defense motion that the videos violated Lee's constitutional protections. In one of those two videos, Beavers is seen removing a package of $5,000 from his ankle and giving it to Lee on Dec. 18, 1997, according to a sworn statement filed by an FBI agent. Investigators say the money is a payoff from a promoter. The defense argued that investigators should have gotten a court order for video surveillance since Lee had an "expectation of privacy" in a hotel room in which he was staying. The judge did not bar the third video because Lee was not staying in that room. In that video, from Oct. 21, 1998, Beavers takes money from his ankle and gives some to Lee and some to a former IBF official, Don Brennan, and Lee puts an envelope on a table and says it is "turkey" from "Fuzzy," the FBI said. In court papers, Beavers said that "turkey" was a payoff and "Fuzzy" referred to King, who prosecutors maintain was a prime beneficiary of Lee's manipulations. Audiotapes from a body wire Beavers wore during the meetings -- and in the other conversations with Lee -- are admissible, since those recordings only require the consent of one person. Beavers, a Virginia boxing commissioner, can also tell the jury about all three hotel meetings. A jury of 12 members and six alternates was formed Thursday after a week of selection. The trial is expected to last three months. The pool was polled about attitudes toward King, whom prosecutors have described as an unindicted coconspirator, a term they also use to describe six other promoters and seven boxing managers. King, whose offices in Deerfield Beach, Fla., were raided by the FBI in June, maintains he never paid the IBF to improve rankings or get a big bout. Other evidence in the case cites payoffs from such big promoters as Bob Arum and Cedric Kushner. Neither they nor the 23 boxers cited in the indictment have been charged. Arum, who promoted Foreman, and manager Ivan Feris Chadid, who handled 10 of the boxers, have provided sworn statements to prosecutors outlining payoffs to ensure favorable treatment by the East Orange-based IBF, the only one of boxing's three major governing bodies in the United States. Arum said he funneled $100,000 to Lee so the IBF would make a special exception and sanction a title fight between Foreman and the unranked Axel Schulz in 1995, with an additional $100,000 to be paid after the fight. (Foreman won the fight in a controversial decision). When Arum learned that another IBF official got $250,000 from Foreman, Arum refused to pay the additional $100,000, according to Arum's statement. Arum has not publicly named the other official. Schulz was promoted by Kushner, who Beavers said made payoffs of $5,000 to $10,000 three to four times a year since 1992. Kushner also gave the IBF $100,000 to mandate a Foreman-Schulz rematch, paid after Lee had Beavers make the offer to the promoter, according to Beavers. Foreman refused the fight and was stripped of his titles. Foreman testified last April before the federal grand jury in Newark that later indicted Lee. The ex-champ told reporters afterward he never paid a bribe. Bissell has barred Lee from any participation in the IBF, pending outcome of the trial. At the request of prosecutors, Bissell in January appointed a monitor to oversee the IBF. Lee, 66, of Fanwood, was indicted in November with three other IBF officials, and is accused of taking payoffs soon after founding the IBF in 1983. He and his son, Robert Jr., 38, of Scotch Plains, will be the only defendants on trial. They face multiyear prison terms if convicted on conspiracy, racketeering, fraud and tax charges. Francisco Fernandez of Colombia, the South American representative of the IBF, remains at large. Brennan, 86, of Warsaw, Va., past president of the U.S. Boxing Association, a group that became the IBF, was severed from the trial due to ill health.
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