When Antonietta DiBenedetto Roy was looking for advice on starting her construction business, she turned to a powerful source: Konstantinos Diamantis, the head of Connecticut’s school construction program.
And when Roy began looking for an administrative assistant to hire for that business, she said, there was only one real choice: Diamantis’ daughter Anastasia.
Roy, who is the owner of a company called Construction Advocacy Professionals, was the second witness to testify in the ongoing criminal trial of Kosta Diamantis, a former state deputy budget director.
And just like the first witness in the case, she told jurors on Tuesday that she provided favors and money to Diamantis in order to secure his support in obtaining lucrative contracts on several school construction projects.
Federal prosecutors, who have charged Diamantis with 22 counts of bribery, extortion, conspiracy and lying to federal investigators, wasted no time in getting Roy to acknowledged that she hired Diamantis’ daughter — who had no experience in the industry — in order to keep him happy and to gain a leg up on bids for school construction projects.
Roy testified that she hired Diamantis’ daughter without interviewing any other candidate for the position and chose to pay her $45 per hour for a part-time role that later transitioned into a full time job.
With the jury watching on, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Novick asked why Roy would agree to do that.
“Mr. Diamantis was very powerful in the state,” Roy said.
“I paid a higher rate because Mr. Diamantis told me to take care of his daughter,” Roy said, adding that Diamantis repeatedly mentioned the large amount of student loan debt his daughter owed.
Roy told the jurors that Diamantis’ daughter was not a particularly good employee and had no interest in furthering a career in the construction industry. But Roy kept her on the payroll, and awarded her bonuses, to keep Diamantis happy and to secure more contracts on school projects in Connecticut.
“I couldn’t get rid of her. She was Mr. Diamantis’ daughter. I would have been blackballed from every job,” Roy said.
Roy also told the jury that she paid Diamantis directly on several occasions when he asked for money. Two of those payments were checks written out to Diamantis. But in another instance, Roy said she hand-delivered $1,000 in cash to Diamantis at a coffee shop in Hartford.
Roy said she wrapped the cash in a towel and said the experience made her “feel like drug dealer.”
As Roy testified, Diamantis sat at the defense table, taking notes and whispering with his attorney.
Roy’s testimony was meant to bolster the prosecution’s claims that Diamantis used his position as the director of the Connecticut Office of School Construction Grants and Review to extort contractors and profit from the local school projects he oversaw.
Diamantis’ defense attorney, Norm Pattis, attempted to raise doubts about those claims earlier on Tuesday when he cross examined John Duffy, another masonry contractor who served as the government’s lead witness. Duffy has already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit extortion in connection with the case.
Pattis sharply questioned Duffy over the course of several hours and tried to make the case that it was Duffy who “shook down” Diamantis.
Pattis questioned Duffy about how frequently he called Diamantis seeking his help on publicly funded construction projects. And he pointed out that at one point Diamantis suggested that Duffy should be paying him a retainer for the amount of assistance he was providing to Duffy.
That line of questioning was intended to make the jury doubt whether Diamantis extorted Duffy and his boss Sal Monarca, the owner of Acranom Masonry, as prosecutors alleged.
Pattis directly asked Duffy whether he sought to take advantage of his relationship with Diamantis, who is his former brother-in law. And he asked what Duffy thought when Diamantis assumed control of Connecticut’s school construction program.
“You thought it could be good to have an uncle in high places, correct?” Pattis asked, using the nickname Duffy used to describe Diamantis.
“Yes,” Duffy grudgingly admitted.
Diamantis’ daughter and his ex-wife, Duffy’s sister, were in the front row of the gallery as Duffy wrapped up his testimony on Tuesday.
Pattis pointed at the pair at one point during cross examination and asked Duffy whether he ever “used” his niece in the past to try to curry favor with Diamantis by delivering wine to him during the holidays.
Duffy said that it might be true.
The majority of Pattis’ questions, however, were intended to show how Duffy repeatedly lied to federal investigators over the course of more than six interviews and to make the jurors question the reliability of Duffy’s testimony.
Duffy admitted that he initially lied to the FBI before being confronted with evidence of the payments to Diamantis. But he told the jury that he had testified honestly in court.
“I lied sometimes,” Duffy said. “Sometimes I’m afraid. Sometimes I’m trying to protect myself, and sometimes trying to protect other people. But I’m telling you the testimony I gave in this court is 100% the truth.”
“How is the jury to know when you are lying and you are telling the truth?” Pattis asked at another point.
Federal prosecutors tried to redeem Duffy after Pattis’ cross examination.
But they spent far more time reminding the jurors about the amount of text messages that were presented, which showed Diamantis directly asking for money from Duffy and Monarca.
Some of those communications included memorable details, like the code words that Duffy used to refer to the bribery payments to Diamantis.
In one such text exchange from January 2020, Duffy told Diamantis that he could expect to receive a “birthday card.”
Under questioning, Duffy admitted that “birthday card” was code for the payments to Diamantis, and he acknowledged that Diamantis’ birthday is actually in June, not January.
Later, prosecutors highlighted a similar text in which Duffy and Diamantis discussed how Monarca owed him 62.5 “pints.”
“What are pints?” Novick asked Duffy. “Are we talking about Guinness?”
“No, not talking about Guinness,” replied Duffy, who grew up in Northern Ireland. “The 62.5 pints is talking about $62,500.”
Duffy explained to the jurors that his use of the code words was an attempt to be “discreet” and conceal the bribery payments that were being negotiated.
The jury was also shown a message in which Diamantis invited Duffy to attend a “fundraiser” to help pay for Diamantis’ daughter’s tuition at the private Renbrook School in West Hartford.
“The school is not giving out scholarships. So we are trying to raise what we can up to $28,000,” Diamantis wrote in the message.
Duffy said he never made a “donation” to that fundraiser, which was held at Cava, a restaurant in Southington that Diamantis frequented.
But Duffy told Monarca in a separate message in 2020 that several key people from the Connecticut construction industry were expected to attend that event.
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
