Nader Cites Anti-RICO Lobbyist Gifts

WASHINGTON — Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee accepted $1.46 million in contributions from lobbyists trying to weaken anti-racketeering laws, consumer activist Ralph Nader said Wednesday.

The committee on Thursday is to consider a bill to change a provision in the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO, which permits civil plaintiffs to recover triple damages from white-collar criminals.

Public Citizen, a group founded by Nader, told a news conference that trade groups representing accountants, savings and loans, securities and commodities firms, banks and insurance companies showered the 14 members of the Senate panel with contributions from 1983 to 1988.

Nader took particular aim at Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), who accepted $213,450 and is the sponsor of the reform bill.

DeConcini is one of five senators who have come under fire for meeting with savings and loan regulators on behalf of Phoenix, Ariz., millionaire Charles H. Keating Jr., a heavy contributor to their campaigns.

Keating is chairman of the parent company of Lincoln Savings & Loan Assn. of Irvine. The institution’s failure is expected to cost taxpayers up to $2 billion.

In an attempt to recover some of the loss, regulators have filed a $1.1-billion civil RICO suit against Keating and his associates.

“Now the ringleader of the Keating Five, clearly the most shamelessly shameless of all senators, Sen. DeConcini . . . would weaken the very law used by regulators and victims of corporate crime against his friend Charles Keating,” Nader said. “This has to be the acme of congressional presumption.”

DeConcini, in a statement, responded that he supported narrowing RICO because it has been misused to target legitimate businesses. His bill specifically permits bank regulators to seek triple damages and would not benefit special interests, he said.

The senator said his original bill would have applied to pending lawsuits, such as the one filed against Keating, but has been changed so that it affects only suits filed after the legislation passed.

A coalition of business, labor and civil liberties groups backing RICO changes issued a statement saying it was “appalled that Public Citizen would personally attack” DeConcini and labeled the news conference “a last-ditch effort to stop a vote on RICO reform legislation.”

Ramona E. Jacobs, a Glendale, Calif., woman who lost $11,000 in the Lincoln failure, complained at the news conference that DeConcini, who conducted a hearing on his bill in June, would not allow her to testify on behalf of fraud victims.

Without triple damages in such civil suits, “wrongdoers will quickly find out that crime--particularly against defenseless citizens--pays,” said Jacobs, who said her loss included an insurance settlement from an automobile accident that left her daughter brain-damaged.

Colorado Securities Commissioner Philip A. Feigin, speaking on behalf of the North American Securities Administrators Assn., said the DeConcini bill represents “a concession of colossal proportions” and “the emasculation of the single most potent weapon against white-collar crime.”

According to Public Citizen, the other senators on the Judiciary panel, in addition to DeConcini, and the contributions they received from 1983 through 1988 from the targeted trade groups were:

Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), $240,632; Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), $219,250; Howell Heflin (D-Ala.), $157,400; Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), $128,600; Gordon J. Humphrey (R-N.H.), $117,903; Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), $92,025; Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) and the ranking minority member, $89,075; Paul Simon (D-Ill.), $74,500; Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), $62,350; Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the committee, $36,750; Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), $19,500, and Herbert Kohl (D-Wis.), who was elected for the first time last year, zero.