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Inside LaborDICC Cl Justice Dept. Would KIlOLL* Protect Pension FundBv VICTOR IUKSEI-WASHINGTON. B.C.—There is Sim billion in pension funds in the U.S., many thousands of them oper-ated by unions.Big majority are as clean as a surgeon's scalpel. Some others are dirty and subject to looting.Now the new Attorney General John Mitchell wants*to probe into them to learn whether any are sources for Cosa Nostra money. This will take digging. There are 159,000 active funds on file with the Labor Dept.’s Office of Labor-Management and Wei fa re-Pension Reports. Some 33,300 are pension-and profit-sharing systems. The Mafia is in some of them—pocket deep.Mitcheil plans no frontal attack on the funds or their new wealthy oligarchy made up of actuaries, barristers, and investment consultants. The attorney general will count on his anticrime task forces. There are eight now. Soon he hopes to put another 32 such task teams into the field. In each, working with the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, the Justice Dept/s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section and other investigatory agencies, will be men from the Labor department’ But the Labor Dept, welfare and pension reporting compliance office has but I lt;5 probers and back-up personnel. Now Mitchell and his crusading Henry Peterson, the racketeering section chief, want a Labor Dept, team of four men attached to each strike force.88 New InvosI igatarsSo a budget was developed to put SS new investigators into the field and back them up with 42 researchers and clerks.This will take some petty cash—S2 million to be exact, for the 1970 fiscal year—about $7ftO,OOfl less than was stolen (according to the General Accounting Office) from the New York City poverty program. Now it’s up to Congress.If the colons do give the Labor Dept, the S3 million, its enforcement office will computerize its files. Thus the field men will be able to process the data piling up in 5LOWI union reports on their general treasuries and three times that many pension funds. In all some laser light will be thrown on the accumulation of some $?,n billion directly or indirectly under union supervision.Without this information, the national labor leaders and the Justice Dept, and its organized crime section can have the investigational agility of a herd of dinosaurs. TT.**re are small locals inside the AH,-O0, independent unions of recognized status, racket unions operated by veterans of Murder, Inc.. and the Cosa Nostra, which have legal pension funds.There is one Independent union of 2MKW members which has rolled up a S125 million fund. Others with Sift to $!a million are garden variety stuff.(Jrand -Junes Are l*tisyThere are some 3$ or 12 investigations «nd grand jury proceedings against those who have attempted toloot the SWO-ariHian Chicago Teamsters Pension Fund. Some are now on trial in New York City.Some of the laborers' pension funds have been infiltrated by the Mafiosi types. There are scores of other locals whose funds are dominated by the mobs who find them the juiciest legal pork barrel' in which they've over wallowed. There are finders fees running into the millions for loans, legal charges, investments, stock purchases, real estate deals and even printing supplies. Electronic data processing would uncover the looters. But the new manpower and computers will be handled gingerly by She Federal*. They will concentrateon organized crime. They don't, want to Heave themselves open to charges of snooping into various.
Newspaper Details
Port Arthur News
Port Arthur, Texas, US
Wed, Apr 30, 1969
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Madison H.
NA, 25 May 2023
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