Crime & Courts

State announces new effort to prosecute Bill Allen on sex-crime allegations

Alaska Attorney General Craig Richards said Friday that the state was launching a new effort to investigate former Veco chief Bill Allen for sex crimes.

But an obstacle remains in the form of the U.S. Department of Justice, which would have to sign off before the state could prosecute Allen under an updated 1910 interstate sex trafficking law called the Mann Act.

Richards made the announcement at a news conference in his downtown Anchorage office Friday morning with U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan. Sullivan led passage of legislation in Congress last year that requires the Justice Department to either allow state and local prosecutors to pursue their own federal Mann Act cases, or give a detailed explanation of why such a prosecution would "undermine the administration of justice."

Two earlier requests by the state — including one from Sullivan, when he was Alaska's attorney general — were denied by the Justice Department "with not much explanation," Richards said.

"But things have changed," he added, referring to Sullivan's legislation.

Richards said at the news conference that the state had again asked the Justice Department for the authority to prosecute Allen — which this time starts a 60-day countdown for federal officials to decide whether to allow a case to move forward. Richards' request came in a letter sent Friday morning to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

In a prepared statement, a Washington, D.C., attorney for Allen, George Terwilliger, said Friday's announcement was being reviewed.

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"But this development doesn't present any basis for the Department of Justice to depart from its previous decisions to decline prosecution," Terwilliger said.

The Anchorage Police Department and FBI investigated allegations of sex crimes against Allen starting in 2004. By 2009, two detectives said they had gathered enough evidence to bring Allen's case to a grand jury, and they said a federal prosecutor from Justice Department headquarters in Washington agreed.

Their leading witness, Paula Roberds, had said Allen flew her from Seattle to Anchorage several times for sex when she was a minor, though the Mann Act prohibits such conduct at any age.

But in 2010, top officials at the Justice Department vetoed Allen's prosecution on the sex charges, though he was convicted of tax violations and bribery and served time in federal prison.

At the time, the APD officer who led the investigation, Kevin Vandegriff, called the case "very solid." In a phone interview Friday morning, Vandegriff, now an APD lieutenant, said the new developments this week came "totally out of the blue."

The investigation against Allen, he said, is in a "suspended status" — not active, but ready to be reopened by APD where it was left off. Vandegriff said he appreciated Sullivan's efforts to pass the legislation.

"Because it is a righteous case and deserved to be indicted," Vandegriff said.

The decision not to charge Allen with sex crimes fed speculation that he was given informal immunity based on his cooperation with the federal government that led to guilty verdicts against former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens for violating federal disclosure laws. Those charges were later dropped when the Justice Department admitted it had failed to share key evidence with Stevens' defense team, as the law requires.

The case against Allen has since become a cause celebre among some Alaskans seeking to clear Stevens' name.

"Was there some kind of deal?" Sullivan asked Friday. "Were the Department of Justice's actions in protecting Bill Allen from federal or state prosecution a result of some kind of plea deal to get him to testify against former Ted Stevens?"

A spokeswoman for Richards, Cori Mills, said that the state prosecutors will not pursue any additional investigation or work on the case until it hears back from the Justice Department.

There's no time limit for authorities to bring charges against Allen under the Mann Act, Richards said at the news conference, and no problem with using the law to prosecute events that took place long before Sullivan updated it.

Officials at the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

Nathaniel Herz

Anchorage-based independent journalist Nathaniel Herz has been a reporter in Alaska for nearly a decade, with stints at the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Public Media. Read his newsletter, Northern Journal, at natherz.substack.com

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