Donovan’s Trial Set to Open on Feb. 18
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NEW YORK — A judge on Monday set Feb. 18 for the trial of former Labor Secretary Raymond J. Donovan, accused with nine other persons of bilking New York City out of $7.4 million in a tunnel construction project.
Donovan, 55, the first sitting Cabinet member indicted for a crime, was not in the Bronx courtroom when state Supreme Court Justice John Collins set the date for jury selection to begin.
Collins also announced that Donovan’s co-defendant and construction executive Ronald Schiavone--whose Secaucus, N.J., construction firm is at the center of the fraud scandal--had dismissed his lawyer and would represent himself at the trial.
Donovan, an executive with the Schiavone firm during the alleged fraud; Schiavone; a state senator; seven others and two corporations are accused in a 137-count indictment of grand larceny, falsifying records and filing false documents.
An “audibility hearing” on the admissibility of wiretap tapes was set for Feb. 10.
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