This one will hurt.
Ex-Veco Corp. CEO Bill Allen admitted in court Friday that he had company employees work several months on a remodeling project at the Girdwood home of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.
The former head of the oil field services company made the admission Friday while testifying in the federal corruption trial of a former state lawmaker.
Allen and former Veco vice president Rick Smith in May pleaded guilty to extortion, conspiracy and bribery of legislators.
Under cross-examination by defense attorney James Wendt, representing former state Rep. Pete Kott, Allen acknowledged that the more than $400,000 he admitted spending in the bribery charge was for other legislators - and including for work done at the Girdwood home of Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the U.S. Senate.
"I gave Ted some old furniture," Allen said. "I don't think there was a lot of material. There was some labor."
The workers were Veco employees, probably one to four at a time, Allen said. He said the work on the home lasted for "probably a couple of months." Later, he said it might have been as much as six months.
The remodeling work in summer and fall 2000 more than doubled the size of the house, a four-bedroom structure that is Stevens' official residence in Alaska.
"Some labor"? Six months, 1-4 employees each day. That's not "some labor".
Just one employee working for six months, 40 hour weeks, at $20/hour would be $19,200. That's a nice-sized bribe. Then multiply that by however many more employees VECO had doing work.