IBF Founder Acquitted of Bribery

N E W A R K, N.J., Aug. 17, 2000 -- The man who founded the IBF as analternative to boxing sanctioning bodies he considered corrupt wasacquitted today on charges he took bribes from promoters andmanagers to give good rankings to their boxers.

A federal jury deliberated 15 days before finding Robert W. Leeinnocent on all but six of the 33 felony charges he faced,including racketeering.

Robert Lee Jr., who served as an aide to his father, wasacquitted on all nine charges against him.

The elder Lee could face some prison time on the sixconvictions, which included tax evasion, money laundering andinterstate travel in aid of racketeering.

Neither testified.

Promoters Said Payoffs Were Routine

The verdict was a major defeat for the Newark federalprosecutors and FBI agents whose four-year investigation exposedunsavory practices long rumored to infect the sport.

Still pending is a parallel lawsuit brought by federalprosecutors.

The four-month trial featured damaging testimony from some ofthe biggest promoters in the sport, including Bob Arum and CedricKushner, who contended that routine payoffs were the price of doingbusiness with the East Orange-based IBF.

Boxing’s most powerful promoter, Don King, did not appear, butprosecutors called him an unindicted coconspirator, maintaining hewas the prime beneficiary of Lee’s manipulations.

Lee’s future in the sport is uncertain. The trial judge last yarstripped him of authority in IBF, which later named a new presidentand continues operating under the scrutiny of a court-appointedmonitor.

Jurors Heard 80 Audiotapes

Prosecutors accused Lee and other IBF officials of taking$338,000 from promoters and managers virtually since the IBF’sinception in 1983 in exchange for favors and rigged rankings.

As one of the boxing world’s three major sanctioning groups, itsrankings and decisions play a large role in the purses earned byboxers, of which managers and promoters get a cut.

Much of the prosecution case rested on conversations with Leethat were secretly recorded by C. Douglas Beavers, the longtimechairman of the IBF ratings committee and ousted Virginia boxingcommissioner who became a government informant with immunity.

While Beavers was on the stand for 22 days, prosecutors played80 audiotapes and three videotapes for jurors. Two of the videosshowed Beavers and Lee passing cash in a Portsmouth, Va., hotelroom.

The FBI confronted Lee after the third videotaped meeting onOct. 21, 1998, but the former Union County homicide investigatorand deputy state boxing commissioner was not interested in making adeal.

Two months later, he took a $25,000 payoff he solicited frompromoter Dino Duva of Main Events to give junior middleweightFernando Vargas a title shot, testified Duva, who is no longer withwith Totowa-based outfit. Vargas remains the IBF champion.

Racism Alleged

The defense attempted to show that Lee was the victim of a“selective prosecution” of boxing’s only black-run sanctioninggroup, portraying Beavers, who is white, as a racist.

Lee lawyer Gerald Krovatin said promoters testified against himto hurt King, and maintained that Lee had a right to accept“gifts” and “gratuities” from business associates.

No boxers were accused of wrongdoing. Prosecutors did not chargethat any fights were fixed, but testimony exposed the tactic offinding a credible, yet beatable, opponent for a vulnerablechampion.

Such machinations led to the largest payoffs described duringthe trial, involving heavyweight champion George Foreman and Germanchampion Axel Schulz.

Foreman promoter Bob Arum, of Top Rank Inc. in Las Vegas,testified that he used a middleman to get $100,000 to the IBF tosanction the Foreman-Schulz title fight in 1995. An exception wasneeded because Schulz was unranked, and Foreman was avoiding highlyregarded boxers, testimony showed.

When Foreman prevailed in a disputed split decision, Schulzpromoter Kushner sought a rematch, an available remedy under IBFrules.

Kushner testified he was surprised when Beavers told him itwould cost $100,000, especially since he had been making regularpayoffs to the IBF for years to keep in their good graces.

The heavyset promoter, who was called “Fat Man” by Lee andBeavers in conversations covertly taped by the FBI with help fromBeavers, said he got the money from Schulz’s German-bornco-promoter, Wilfrid Sauerland, who confirmed his account.

Even so, the rematch never happened. Foreman relinquished theIBF belt, with witnesses saying he did not want to risk defeat.

Trinidad Denied Payoffs

Of the 38 witnesses, the only marquee fighter to appear waslongtime IBF welterweight champion Felix Trinidad, who testifiedfor the defense that he never made payoffs, or had anyone makepayoffs, to ensure good treatment by the IBF.

Trinidad, now the WBA super welterweight champ, did not figurein payoffs described in court.

Greg Fritz, a spokesman for Don King Productions in DeerfieldBeach, Fla., has maintained that King’s payments to sanctioninggroups are all legitimate.

Lee, 66, of Fanwood, N.J., and his son, Robert Jr., 38, ofScotch Plains, N.J., were the only defendants on trial.

Former IBF championship committee chairman Bill Brennan, 86, ofWarsaw, Va., past president of the U.S. Boxing Association, a groupthat became the IBF, was severed from the trial because of illhealth.

The IBF’s South American representative, Francisco “Pacho”Fernandez of Colombia, remains at large.