Depositions on tap in AG probe

Monday, April 2, 2001 | 11:23 a.m.

Key depositions are scheduled this month in a District Court lawsuit that has raised allegations the Nevada attorney general's office conducted a secret intelligence investigation of gaming regulators.

Topping the list of those giving sworn pre-trial testimony is former Gaming Control Board Chairman Bill Bible, who is reported to have been a target of the investigation.

Bible, now president of the influential Nevada Resort Association, the casino industry's political arm, is scheduled to give his deposition on April 30.

The lawsuit was filed against Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa by Mike Anzalone, one of her former investigators who alleged he was forced to resign because he wouldn't participate in the intelligence probe. District Judge James Mahan has set a July 10 trial date.

Bible has publicly criticized the attorney general's office for conducting the wide-ranging investigation from 1996-1998 based on the previously discarded corruption allegations of Frank Romano, a disgruntled slot route operator who lost his gaming license in 1990 following a cheating scandal at his company, American Coin.

Romano is scheduled to give his deposition on April 11.

His allegations surfaced in a 1990 report prepared by his Florida private investigator, Charles Meacham. Bible obtained the report himself in 1990 and turned it over to then-Attorney General Brian McKay, who found no merit to the accusations.

But in 1996 -- after McKay left office and after Del Papa, his successor, had a falling out with Bible -- Del Papa's deputies took a new interest in Romano's claims, according to documents made public in Anzalone's suit.

Del Papa even met with Romano while her investigators secretly were probing the Gaming Control Board members who had moved to revoke Romano's license.

In a February 1996 confidential memo, Ronald Wheatley, one of Del Papa's investigators, said Romano told him that Bible had "clean hands," but former Board Member Gerald Cunningham should be investigated.

Cunningham, a career lawman, has said it is ridiculous for anyone to believe he was on the take.

"Romano does not believe that Chairman Bible is involved in any of the alleged corrupt activities of GCB personnel," Wheatley wrote in his memo. "Romano then stated that Bible is dangerous for two reasons -- he is ignorant of how gaming really works and ... he is arrogant."

Last April Del Papa's office made public a 16-page chronology, which said the office had reviewed Romano's allegations in March 1996 and concluded there was "no credible evidence of criminal wrongdoing by any present or past public official which would warrant an investigation."

But the memo acknowledged that Wheatley checked Bible's automobile and property records a year later on April 25, 1997, after Wheatley had received a confidential tip alleging "payoffs" to Bible.

The memo also confirmed that Wheatley met with Romano and Meacham five days later on April 30.

Then on Jan. 13, 1998, the attorney general's office acknowledged, Bible's property records were re-checked by Wheatley after the investigator claimed to have received another tip on alleged payoffs to Bible.

No charges were ever filed against Bible or any other Control Board members.

But in the middle of the investigation, Del Papa's office gave the FBI a confidential intelligence report alleging Bible and top elected Nevada leaders could be bribed. The report was turned over while the FBI was conducting a background investigation on Bible, who was seeking a presidential appointment to a federal gambling commission.

Bible ultimately got the appointment, and this year the FBI, amid much publicity about the report, went to the unusual step of saying it had found no merit to the attorney general's allegations.

This week, meanwhile, more key depositions are scheduled in Anzalone's lawsuit.

Two former chiefs of enforcement at the Control Board, Ron Asher and Andy Vanyo, are expected to answer questions under oath on Tuesday about the attorney general's investigation.

Both men told the Sun in a March 26, 1997, article that they were interviewed during the probe in the spring of 1996.

Asher and Vanyo said they were left with the impression that investigators were looking for derogatory information, which didn't exist, on Bible and the Control Board.

Asher, a career FBI agent before taking over the board's Enforcement Division, also was the subject of background checks by the attorney general's office.

More important testimony in Anzalone's suit is expected this week from Gary Wright, a former Del Papa investigator who has stepped forward to corroborate Anzalone's allegations,

Wright, who is scheduled to be deposed on Wednesday, recently filed an affidavit alleging that Wheatley asked him to obtain the bank records of Bible and his predecessor, Steve DuCharme, without a subpoena in 1996.

The records, Wright said, were to go to Deputy Attorney General David Thompson, who was spearheading the intelligence investigation.

Wright said he refused to get the records, and like Anzalone, was subsequently removed from the probe.

Anzalone, who now lives in Florida, charged in his suit that Thompson wanted him to secretly obtain Bible's telephone and bank records as early as December 1995.

Thompson and Wheatley have denied in sworn depositions seeking any records without a subpoena.

Another former Del Papa investigator, Bob Francesconi, also is schedule to give a deposition in the suit on April 12.

Francesconi was quoted with Anzalone in an April 8, 1997, Sun story about lax evidence handling procedures within the attorney general's office.