Declaring that enough is enough, U.S. District Judge John Sedwick said Tuesday it is high time for former Veco Corp. chief executive Bill Allen to come to terms with his crimes and face sentencing for corrupting Alaska's political system.

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Bill Allen, the chief government witness.

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Sedwick rejected suggestions made in secret filings last week by federal prosecutors that Allen and former Veco Vice President Rick Smith should continue to enjoy freedom indefinitely. In reporting that the government had asserted the two men were still needed for ongoing corruption investigations, Sedwick expressed displeasure at how long the matter was dragging out.

"The community has substantial interest in seeing the imposition of punishment for these crimes without undue delay," Sedwick wrote in a pair of matching orders filed Tuesday.

Unless prosecutors can convince him to the contrary with strong and detailed arguments, Sedwick said, he will sentence the men on Oct. 28 -- at 8:30 a.m. for Allen and 10 a.m. for Smith.

Sedwick also put prosecutors on notice that he was considering imposing the maximum fine on Allen regardless of prison-time reductions for his cooperation or any credit provided by federal sentencing guidelines. If Sedwick follows through, Allen would have to write a check for $750,000, a substantial chunk of his $6.5 million share of the 2007 sale of Veco to the international engineering and construction firm CH2M Hill.

On May 7, 2007, Allen and Smith each pleaded guilty to three felonies: conspiracy to commit extortion, bribery and fraud; bribery; and conspiracy to impede the Internal Revenue Service. Within months, each gave damning testimony in the corruption trials of former Reps. Pete Kott and Vic Kohring. Allen was also a central witness against former Sen. Ted Stevens, then became a central figure in the demise of Stevens' case.

In October, a jury found Stevens guilty of seven counts of filing false disclosures. But the government's case collapsed following revelations that prosecutors had failed to turn over favorable evidence to Stevens, including a statement by Allen five months before the trial that he couldn't recall a meeting he later testified about.

Kott and Kohring were released from prison last month while Sedwick considers the significance of favorable evidence they too did not receive before trial.

At the time of Allen's and Smith's guilty pleas, prosecutors asked that their sentences be delayed while the investigation of Alaska politicians continued. By cooperating, they could earn substantial reductions in their prison sentences -- two of the counts carry five-year terms, while the bribery charge is punishable by 10 years.

Sedwick agreed, and directed prosecutors to file a status report five months later. Since the pleas, prosecutors have filed six status reports, all under seal, asking for continuances. Their latest, filed June 30, asked Sedwick to agree to a seventh status report, on Sept. 30.

No way, Sedwick shot back.

"The court finds that it is no longer in the interest of justice to continue a seemingly endless series of status reports which push the imposition of punishment further and further into the future," Sedwick wrote. "Allen's sentencing date has been extended to the point that more than two years have now passed since he pled guilty, and some of the conduct which underlies his pleas of guilty took place as much as seven years ago."

While federal prosecutors have charged 12 former lawmakers, lobbyists and businessmen since the first indictment was handed up Dec. 6, 2006, only one person has been charged since Stevens' trial -- former Rep. Bev Masek, who agreed to plead guilty March 12 to a single count of conspiracy to commit bribery.

The investigation was disrupted by the fallout from the Stevens case and accusations by an FBI agent that investigators got too cosy with witnesses, including Allen. With an internal review by the Justice Department and a criminal contempt investigation by a special prosecutor in Washington, an entire new team of agents and prosecutors has taken over.

Where the Alaska investigation was once handled by two relatively junior attorneys in the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section and two lawyers on loan from the U.S. Attorney's office in Anchorage, seven government attorneys have recently entered appearances in the Alaska cases. One is interim U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler, a career Alaska prosecutor, and another is Kendall Day, a trial attorney in Washington involved in the Abramoff lobbying scandal.

Sedwick recognized that the new team could stumble over his order and he offered them one out: They could file under seal a special request no later than Oct. 12 giving a detailed list of every suspect whom Allen and Smith are witnesses against, where the prosecutions of those suspects would take place, the date a grand jury is expected to bring charges, and whether Allen or Smith would testify at trial.

But Sedwick said he was strongly leaning toward imposing sentences on Oct. 28. The government could still come back up to a year later and ask for a reduction in sentence based on Allen's and Smith's cooperation.

"Until now, the court has been of the view that providing for the investigation of other persons warranted delay in the imposition of Allen's sentence," Sedwick wrote. "That view is necessarily (a)ffected by the passage of time. The United States has now had more than two years in which to use Allen's cooperation to present charges to a grand jury involving the remainder of those who are under investigation. What is more, it does not appear to the court that the likely remaining potential targets include anyone whose identity was not known at the time Allen entered his guilty pleas."

The names of a number of potential targets have surfaced in trials and elsewhere, and include Stevens' son Ben, a former Alaska Senate president; U.S. Rep. Don Young, who has spent more than $1 million of campaign funds on legal fees over the last three years; and former state Sen. Jerry Ward.

Find Richard Mauer online at adn.com/contact/rmauer or call 257-4345.

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