Bill J. Allen, a traveling plumber who became one of Alaska’s most powerful figures and a dominant figure in the state’s oil industry, subsequently defeated a U.S. senator in a spectacular bribery and corruption plan. I lost grace. He died on June 29th. He was 85 years old.
His death was announced by the Callahan Edfast Morgue and Crematorium, the funeral home of Grand Junction, Colorado, where he lived. The funeral hall representative confirmed the death, but declined to quote where he died or the cause.
As President and Chief Executive Officer of Veco Corporation, an engineering and services company co-founded in 1968, Allen sits at the crossroads of Alaska’s vast oil industry and the equally vast political interests surrounding it. I did.
He specializes in anointing the connection between the two, spending money on the financial resources of friendly politicians and flooding businesses like Veco with work. By the early 2000s, Veco was the largest Alaska-owned and Alaska-based company with 3,500 employees, 18 subsidiaries and annual revenues of $ 400 million.
Allen, a high school dropout from New Mexico, enjoyed a cowboy-like reputation. Cheeky and proud, he distributed his financial tycoons almost openly to shape the politics of the state. He was fined $ 28,000 in 1985 for secretly pooling money from Veco employees and handing it over to an oil-friendly politician candidate.
In the end, he and one of his vice presidents, Rick Smith, settled on an almost humorous and corrupt deal with his politician in the state.
They regularly booked a suite in Westmark Baranov, a luxurious Art Deco hotel four blocks from the State Capitol in Juneau.
Allen and his circle seemed to enjoy their shamelessness. He and Smith always booked Suite 604, and Allen always sat in the same chair. He boasted that he had a $ 100 invoice in his front pocket. This makes it easy to pass them on to friendly politicians. A politician’s girlfriend even had a hat with CBC characters embroidered on it for a “corrupted bastard club.”
But Mr. Allen’s consistency proved his redo. A federal agent noticed the deal and placed a pinhole camera on the opposite wall of his favorite chair. After recording hours of illegal activity, he confronted Allen and Smith in August 2006. Allen agreed to cooperate on the same day.
He may have felt additional pressure to play the ball. As early as 2004, law enforcement officers were investigating multiple accusations that Mr Allen had sexually assaulted a minor girl.
He was found guilty of corruption and bribery and was sentenced to three years in prison and a $ 750,000 fine in exchange for his cooperation. The federal government withdrew the investigation into sexual assault, but the Justice Department denied that the decision to do so was part of the deal.
Allen has become a major witness to the government in a series of corruption and bribery cases against state and federal politicians, several of whom have been convicted.
The most prominent senator, Ted Stevens, was charged in 2008 for failing to register a series of gifts from Mr. Allen, especially a major renovation of the senator’s house south of Anchorage. it was done.
The two were friends — they owned a racehorse together — but that didn’t prevent Mr Allen from providing critical testimony to the Senator. Refurbishment.
Three months later, FBI whistleblowers alleged that the prosecutor withheld evidence from Mr Stevens’ defense counsel. This includes an interview in which Allen said he had never spoken to Stevens’ intermediary. The Justice Department asked the judge to withdraw the indictment, which he did immediately. (Mr. Stevens has not yet been sentenced.)
Stevens died in a plane crash in 2010.
William James Allen was born on April 6, 1937 in Socorro, New Mexico, the son of Roger and Laura Allen. His father was a plumber who was hired by the Works Progress Administration, the New Deal policy agency that built the public infrastructure, at some point during the Great Depression.
He is survived by his daughters Tammy Kerrigan and Shannon West. His son, Mark Allen. At least 9 grandchildren. And at least two great-grandchildren. Detailed information about the survivors was not immediately available.
He dropped out of high school at the age of 15 and worked in the New Mexico oil industry. He first worked as a welder and then as a plumber. He moved around and arrived in California around 1967 before heading to Alaska.
His timing was perfect. A few months after he arrived, the largest oil field in North America was discovered near Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope of Alaska. The industry exploded vigorously, and oil companies suddenly needed professional services (equipment, logistics, repairs) to strengthen their operations.
Allen and his friend Wayne Vertri set up a service company they called the Vertri Company, which was later shortened to Veco. Allen acquired Bertri in 1970.
Initially small, it had only four employees, but the power of the Alaskan oil boom has helped the company grow rapidly. By the end of the 1970s, Veco had expanded to gold mining, drilling and even shipbuilding. However, Veco went bankrupt due to the decline in profits of the oil industry in the early 1980s.
Allen refused to buckle, and his fate turned around when Exxon hired Beco to lead the cleanup after tanker Exxon Valdez dumped 10.8 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound in 1989. Did.
He also made a short turn as a hero in 1988. He and Beko helped rescue three gray whales trapped in ice near Point Barrow. This is told in the 2012 movie “Everybody’s Whale” starring Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski.
Allen recovered and focused on lobbying and politics. Although he claimed to be non-political, he tended to favor the Republicans. By the end of the 1990s, he had become the center of political gravity in Alaska and was regularly ranked by the news media as the state’s most powerful businessman.
In 1989, he purchased The Anchorage Times, one of the state’s largest newspapers. Promising to take on his rival, The Anchorage Daily News, he eventually stabbed his treatise on the ground.
He closed it and sold its property to The Daily News in 1992, stipulating that it would give regular space to the newspaper’s editorial pages to express his conservative political views. He continued the column until 2007, when his legal issues stopped him.
Allen sold Beco that same year, bringing a profit of about $ 146 million to him and his children. They spent the money on racehorses and private planes. One horse, Mine That Bird, won the Kentucky Derby in 2009.
He was released from prison in 2011 and later lived in New Mexico and Colorado.He continued to suffer from accusations of sexual assault, including: 2014 proceedings by women He said he had been in a relationship with her when she was fifteen.
However, the federal government refused to resume the investigation, even under pressure from two Republican Alaskan US Senators, Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski.
