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Acquitted Last Week, Hansen Now Faces Perjury Charges

March 5, 2007 — Prosecutors have charged former Senator Alicia "Chucky" Hansen with perjury, a week after a jury acquitted her of a conflict-of-interest charge in District Court.
Hansen was tried twice for the corruption-related charge. A jury failed to reach a verdict in September, and a second jury found her not guilty.
Federal prosecutors now allege Hansen lied when she told jurors her husband, Esdel Hansen, had never been her chief of staff, and that she did not have a written set of rules for her Senate office staff.
"Well, ma'am, isn't it true that Eden Hansen, your husband, was your chief of staff for a period of time in your office?" prosecutors asked the former senator in September.
Hansen then testified: "No, never for me or no Senator. You have no document that my husband has ever been chief of staff, garbage man, contractor man, garbage carrier, nothing."
During the second conflict-of-interest trial in February, Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Murphy showed jurors documents listing Esdel Hansen as the senator's chief of staff in 2001. Another document listed 36 rules for Hansen's office, recovered from her home by an FBI agent.
Rule 6 states: "No letter, document, press release or any other information whatsoever shall leave the office without prior approval of the senator."
At the bottom of the list, the document says: "I the undersigned have read and understand these office rules. I also understand that any deviation from these rules, no matter how trivial, will result in my immediate termination."
Hansen staff member Althea Simmonds testified that she always followed Hansen's office rules.
Murphy said the rules were significant in Hansen's corruption trial, because the one-time gubernatorial candidate had characterized inconsistencies in a contract with Global Resources Management (GRM) as mistakes made by her staff.
Hansen signed a $25,000 contract for GRM to analyze legislation creating a technical park at the University of the Virgin Islands' St. Croix campus. The work was to be completed between February 2002 and December 2002.
The actual work done by GRM was completed Jan. 31, 2002. "Therefore, GRM, in fact, did no work under the written contract," said Clifford Goodman, an FBI special agent.
Prosecutors had previously alleged that Hansen illegally steered the $25,000 contract to GRM because her husband worked for the company, and the pair would directly benefit from the contract. Also, prosecutors said Hansen accepted an illegal $1,000 campaign donation from GRM, which they said was tantamount to a bribe.
Jurors sided with Hansen's version of the transaction, however. Hansen's attorney, George Hodge, argued the Esdel Hansen never received money from the $25,000, and that the campaign donation was the legal maximum, no more.
Charges against Esdel Hansen were thrown out shortly before the trial of GRM's founder, Ashley Andrews, and GRM accountant Campbell Malone.
Andrews and Malone were convicted of conspiracy and other charges last year for using their government connections to get a no-bid $3.6-million government sewer-repair contract.
The company had nearly no resources or employees, and almost no experience.
Ohanio Harris, a former aide to then-Gov. Charles Turnbull, pleaded guilty to illegally helping GRM get the contract.
It was not clear when Hansen might stand trial on the perjury charges.
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