Corrupt Oil Exec Focus of Reopened Underage Sex CaseYeesh. There’s muck and then there’s Alaskan muck.
Bill Allen, the former CEO of Veco, has been the government’s star witness in a number of corruption cases against state lawmakers, and he would surely be at the heart of any case against Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and his son Ben, should the current grand jury investigation result in an indictment. So a checkered past would be sure to come up.
This would surely qualify. The Anchorage Daily News has the whole sordid tale, and I won’t recount it here. Suffice it to say that the central allegation concerns whether Allen had a sexual relationship with a crack-addicted 14 year-old named Bambi Tyree back in the mid-90s; Allen is said to have provided a stream of gifts to her and her family, ranging from a car to $5,000. The main fact witness for that allegation seems to be another drug addict who was Tyree’s boyfriend when she was 18 (he was 36). It’s not clear what Tyree herself says about it. And Allen’s lawyer denies that there was ever any such relationship.
In any case, Anchorage police began investigating anew late last year. A prior investigation was dropped in 2004 at the request of federal prosecutors, who were investigating a broader sex and drug ring. Why has it started again? “To make sure there’s nothing else out there that we’re missing,” says one police captain. Somehow I’ve gotta believe it’s more complicated than that.