Columnist Jeff German: Another week of waiting in lawsuit against Del Papa

Mike Anzalone is hoping patience will pay off for him in District Court.

The former state investigator will have to wait another week before he learns what's in the secret files of Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa that could help him prove she once conducted an intelligence probe of top gaming regulators.

Discovery Commissioner Thomas Biggar has delayed a hearing on which documents to turn over to Anzalone until next Monday, the same day Del Papa is scheduled to announce her candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

Del Papa has steadfastly denied conducting an intelligence investigation, a claim that has many skeptics in state government.

Some believe there may be documents hidden away in the attorney general's files that could cause her political heat in the 2000 Senate race. The names of several prominent Nevadans in the private and public sector were said to have been dragged through the mud during the reported probe.

Anzalone, you'll recall, is suing Del Papa for forcing him to resign because he wouldn't participate in the investigation, which reportedly sought dirt on the likes of Bill Bible and Steve DuCharme, the former and current chairmen of the state Gaming Control Board.

Bible, who has had a longstanding feud with Del Papa, is a prominent Democrat close to Sen. Richard Bryan, one of the Democratic honchos backing Del Papa's Senate candidacy. Bible has not forgotten the embarrassment the attorney general caused him while he was at the helm of the Control Board.

Despite Del Papa's insistence that no intelligence investigation occurred, Biggar left the door open last month for Anzalone to pursue his claims against the attorney general.

Biggar, who oversees the sharing of evidence in civil cases, has been reviewing behind closed doors nearly 50,000 documents Del Papa reluctantly provided him. Most of those documents are related to a criminal investigation into the slot cheating activities of Ron Harris, a former Control Board electronics expert.

Last month the discovery commissioner hinted he likely would be giving Anzalone portions of videotapes the attorney general's office made with Harris after he pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate in the reported intelligence probe. The raw tapes once were leaked to ABC news.

The case, meanwhile, continues to be a hot potato in District Court.

District Judge Nancy Saitta, a former Del Papa deputy, recently removed herself from the case, which randomly was assigned to newly elected District Judge James Mahan.

Mahan is holding a hearing next Monday on whether to turn it back over to District Judge Mark Gibbons, who had it prior to Saitta.

*

State gaming agents have concluded there were no unusual betting patterns at Las Vegas sports books in the hours before the heavyweight title bout between Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis.

"We see no abnormalities," says Keith Copher, the Gaming Control Board's chief of enforcement. "The line was not influenced."

Some local bettors had been making noise that the line had jumped too much toward Holyfield at the last minute.

But a two-month Enforcement Division investigation found no evidence to suggest the movement was the result of a nefarious plot by illegal bookies. Gaming agents spent hours poring over computer records and videotapes at the sports books the past two months.

Copher says the results of the probe will be forwarded to New York authorities investigating whether the March 13 fight was fixed.

The fight was called a draw, even though it was obvious Holyfield lost. Most of the bets in Las Vegas ended up being refunded.

*

Heads are turning over the lawsuit filed by Lee-Ann Keever, a longtime staffer at the Nevada Ethics Commission.

Keever, the panel's only full-time employee, filed a defamation suit last month, alleging the commission issued a white paper to the Legislature that wrongly criticized her work. The state of Nevada was named as the defendant in the suit.

The white paper pumped up the job performance of the commission's deputy attorney general at Keever's expense.

The Legislature has been considering Gov. Kenny Guinn's package to reform the ethics panel, which includes a provision to fund a full-time executive director and a legal counsel.

archive