Witness details payoffs to Evans

A construction manager testifies that he gave former Tampa housing chief Audley Evans about $79,000 in bribes.

By JEFF TESTERMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 8, 2001

TAMPA -- The government's key witness in the Tampa Housing Authority corruption trial gave detailed testimony Wednesday about paying about $79,000 in bribes to the housing agency's former chief, Audley Evans.

Bill Williams Jr., 54, an Orlando construction manager, testified that he laid the foundation for housing authority contracts in calls to Evans from federal prison.

When he got out of prison, they worked out the details over frequent dinners at Malio's restaurant in Tampa, he said.

"Audley said he'd never asked anyone for money, but he needed money now because he had a lot of obligations and he wanted to get into real estate," Williams said.

From February 1994 to March 1996, Williams said he visited Evans' housing authority office 12 times and delivered $73,800 in bribes. Williams said he also showed up frequently to ask for favors, like immediate payment for construction jobs he hadn't begun.

Williams became such a fixture at the housing authority that when he arrived at Evans' office on Oct. 4, 1995, "I was buzzed right in, I gave Audley the money and he put it into his black briefcase," Williams testified.

Payments were in cash, Williams said, and witnesses were never present. There rarely was any talk while packets of bills were handed over because Evans "was afraid his office was bugged."

Williams said he also paid $5,248 for carpeting and roof repairs on rental duplexes the Jamaican-born Evans owned under a company named Caribbean Properties.

In return for the bribes, Williams obtained $1.67-million in construction jobs in housing projects: brick work in College Hill, roofing in Riverview Terrace, sod and seed work at the Central Park Apartments.

Evans' innovative program uniting housing residents in joint ventures with outside contractors had two advantages for Williams: every contract he got was a no-bid contract, he said, and the use of residents' companies shielded Williams, then a twice-convicted federal felon, from the view of auditors and prying newspaper reporters.

Evans, 48, the executive director of the Tampa Housing Authority from 1988 to 1996, was indicted by a federal grand jury last April with Dr. Patrick Watson, a Tampa physician, and C. Hayward Chapman, a local developer. The three are charged in a kickback conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development of $4.5-million.

In an agreement with prosecutors that could still put him in prison for 10 years, Williams has pleaded guilty to bribing Evans and agreed to testify truthfully about his crimes.

Williams was steady and confident as he testified for the government Wednesday morning, recalling intricate details of contracts and kickbacks.

But Wednesday afternoon, under a barrage of questions from Evans' defense attorney, Arnold Levine, Williams' memory failed. He was unable to remember details of his criminal convictions for bank fraud, what year he appeared before a Tampa grand jury, even the names of some of his old corporations.

He answered, "I can't recall" 46 times during Wednesday's afternoon session.

"My mind is very cloudy right now," Williams said in response to a question about what he had been asked during his grand jury appearance.

Williams, who owes the IRS $1.3-million in back taxes, admitted filing a false tax return in 1994 by omitting money paid him by the Tampa Housing Authority, but waffled when asked if his plea agreement could result in tax charges being dropped.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys alike appeared surprised when Levine produced a copy of a $5,000 check cashed by Williams the same day he cashed another check for a $9,300 kickback to Evans.

The check had not been previously mentioned by Williams, who said the $5,000 check went to Evans, as had every check he had cashed in Tampa for less than $10,000, the amount requiring a bank to report a currency transaction to the government.

"Audley Evans got a lot of money from me," Williams said.

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