State ethics officers have fined Richard Colangelo Jr., Connecticut’s former chief state’s legal professional, $7,000 for allegedly hiring the daughter of former state deputy budget director Konstantinos Diamantis in an effort to safe raises for himself and different state prosecutors.
The Workplace of State Ethics introduced the settlement with Colangelo on Monday, greater than three years after Colangelo retired from state service following an investigation into his relationship with Diamantis.
Colangelo, who’s now serving as a lecturer on the College of New Haven, agreed to pay the civil tremendous however didn’t admit to violating the state’s ethics legal guidelines.
However state ethics officers decided that there was “possible trigger” to imagine Colangelo broke the state’s ethics codes by hiring Diamantis’ daughter as his government assistant, whereas he was in search of pay raises for himself and others from the state’s Workplace of Coverage and Administration.
“This case reinforces the basic precept that state service have to be freed from quid professional quo preparations,” Peter Lewandowski, the director of Workplace of State Ethics, mentioned in a ready assertion. “Though the Respondent contested the Workplace of State Ethics’ place, the decision displays the seriousness of the allegations and our continued dedication to safeguarding the integrity of state authorities. Public belief should stay paramount.”
Colangelo didn’t instantly reply to an electronic mail in regards to the settlement. Diamantis didn’t return a telephone name in search of remark.
The allegations included in Colangelo’s settlement settlement echo the findings that have been included in an almost 40-page investigative report that was paid for by Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration in late 2021.
Lamont, who was getting ready to marketing campaign for an additional time period as governor in 2022, employed a former federal prosecutor on the Hartford legislation agency Day Pitney to look into the connection between Colangelo and Diamantis after Kevin Rennie, a columnist with The Hartford Courant, wrote an article about Diamantis’ daughter being hired.
The job that Diamantis’ daughter was chosen for in 2020 paid $99,000 per yr. Diamantis, who labored as a deputy within the Workplace of Coverage and Administration on the time, had affect over the state’s finances and state worker pay.
Across the similar time Lamont ordered the investigation into Colangelo and Diamantis, a federal grand jury had also subpoenaed the state in search of details about Diamantis, who managed the state’s multibillion-dollar college development program.
Diamantis, who stepped down from state service in 2021, has since been charged in two separate federal prison circumstances.
He was charged in May 2024 for allegedly extorting contractors on school construction projects and then accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes from those companies. And he was charged earlier this yr for allegedly accepting bribes in return for pressuring state officers to drop a Medicaid audit that was examining the billing practices of a politically connected eye doctor.
