Government focuses on alleged scheme to extort ex-NFL owner

BATON ROUGE, La. - Secretly taped conversations of Edwin Edwards talking with and about Louisiana gambling regulators were played in court today as prosecutors continued efforts to prove the former governor illegally helped former San Franciso 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo Jr. get a casino license.

"Without violating any confidences, should we be encouraged?" Edwards asks Ralph Perlman, a member of the state gambling board, in a telephone conversation recorded March 8, 1997.

"Yes," Perlman replied.

Perlman then told Edwards that the board had narrowed its licensing decision down to two riverboats but making the choice was "not going to be easy."

"I know you're going to do what is right," Edwards said.

Perlman responded that his decision was going to be based on what was best for the community and nothing else.

"I wouldn't have it any other way," Edwards said.

Edwards, his son, Stephen, and five others have been on trial since Jan. 10, charged with racketeering and other crimes. Prosecutors said the men manipulated the licensing of riverboat casinos before and after Edwards' fourth and final term ended in January 1996.

Edwards has acknowledged that he took $400,000 from DeBartolo. He called it a consulting fee but federal prosecutors call it extortion money and DeBartolo is expected to testify to that effect as early as this week.

While the conversation with Perlman indicated the DeBartolo license was not a sure thing, a later taped conversation between Edwards and his son Stephen, indicates that Edwards was anxious to collect from DeBartolo.

"I'm going to tell him just flat out... 'Look ... let me just lay it out ... I've enjoyed working with you, I appreciate your friendship, but we've come to the point now, where this thing is going to work, we have to have an understanding' ... and I want to tell him, and I want 1 percent of gross gaming revenue," Edwards is heard telling Stephen in a March 10, 1997 conversation

FBI agent Geoffrey Santini, who is testifying about the tapes, noted Edwards' travel logs that show Edwards flew to San Francisco on Marcy 12, 1997 - two days after the conversation with Stephen and one day before the gambling board voted to approve a license for DeBartolo. Prosecutors did not watch the meeting but said they now believe Edwards got $400,000 from DeBartolo.

The March 10 tape also indicates that Edwards was counting on support from two men who are now his codefendants - state Sen. Greg Tarver and gambling board member Ecotry Fuller.

Edwards tells Stephen he does not like working with Tarver.

"I'm scared if I don't he's going to get that black guy to put a clog in the wheels," Edwards said, an apparent reference to Fuller, a Tarver ally who is the only black man on the gambling board. "But I'm going to f------ do it, I'm going to tell him that it's no deal unless his man makes the motion. I'm not going to let him sit back and have the votes go forth by my people and then he votes for it."

On Tuesday, Santini, backing his testimony with more audio tapes, testified that Edwards dropped a package in the mail to DeBartolo a day after guaranteeing DeBartolo a copy of a confidential state gambling report.

Santini did not say on Tuesday that the package contained the report, but he noted several secretly made tapes in which Edwards and DeBartolo discuss the document.

DeBartolo was one of the applicants applying for the last of 15 casino licenses and believed the report would give him useful information, prosecutors have said.

"I don't know if you're able to get a copy of this and it might be difficult but maybe you can find out what ... some of the ... questions are," DeBartolo is heard saying in a telephone conversation in late February of 1997.

In a conversation the next day, Edwards tells DeBartolo, "Hey, I'll have that summary in my hands about five this evening. You want me to Fed-Ex it to you?"

Tarver also is accused of helping Edwards obtain the summary.

Tarver's attorney, Mary Olive Pierson, noted that it would not have been illegal for Tarver to have given the report to Edwards, although she denies that he was involved.

Santini, who was on the witness stand nearly all day, was allowed to discuss mainly only the conversations which were captured on tape. His testimony touched on but did not give details into a March 5, 1997, meeting between Edwards and DeBartolo at a Baton Rouge hotel.

According to the indictment, at that meeting Edwards wrote $400,000 on a piece of paper and told DeBartolo that is what he needed before the state gambling board voted to award the casino license.

When prosecutor Mike Magner tried to press the issue, Edwards' attorney, Dan Small, objected and noted that DeBartolo would testify about the meeting.

Jurors also heard tapes of Edwards and his brother, Marion, discussing an agreement they had to pay Louisiana businessman Beldon Fox $250,000 and offer a job to his daughter when the gaming board voted. Fox was on a government list of potential unindicted co-conspirators in this case.

After a while, however, Edwards notes that Fox was no longer supplying the two men with information about the vote.

"I think Mike Foster won't talk to him is what I think," Marion Edwards said.

Edwards later suggested that Marion not work with Fox anymore because he was not delivering them information.

"You've got to call him and clear your skirt," Edwards told Marion.

Although DeBartolo eventually won a license, he gave it up after appearing before a federal grand jury in the summer of 1997.

DeBartolo pleaded guilty in 1998 to one count of failing to report a felony - the alleged extortion by Edwards. Edwards was indicted a short time later.

DeBartolo received a suspended sentence, was fined $1 million and agreed to testify against Edwards. After his guilty plea, he lost control of the 49ers to his sister.

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