In a letter written a week before his April 28 resignation, frmr. internal ethics officer Edwin Stier identified Carlow Scalf, Teamster chief James Hoffa’s top asst., as the man responsible for interfering with Stier’s investigation of links between organized crime and Teamster officials in Chicago. One of Stier’s investigators, Jim Kossler, said that the interference started over a yr. ago, when union officials in the union’s Wash. D.C. HQ held up paychecks for Stier and his staff.
Stier resigned after Teamster officials in D.C. disputed his report that Chic. officials were stealing members’ money, dealing with mobsters, irregular dealings with union trust funds, and replacing Teamster wrkrs. with non-union wrkrs. A yr. earlier. acc. to Kossler, paychecks were held up for Stier’s investigators, and were resumed only after appeals to union pres. Hoffa. Eventually, the investigation was stopped altogether, and Stier responded with his report.
Teamster officials responded by hiring frmr. fed. prosecutor Edward A. McDonald to look into the allegations. Stier, however, turned over his files to current fed. law enforcement authorities, and refused to hand them over to McDonald. Turning over his files to the union, Stier complained, would only allow the wrong people to “learn the identities of our sources so they could be retaliated against.”
Before becoming Hoffa’s exec. asst., Scalf was admin. asst. to Larry Brennan, then head of the Teamsters’ Mich. Joint Council 43. In June of 2000, the Teamsters Independent Rev. Bd. (IRB) charged Brennan with embezzling union funds to fund his and other officers’ election campaigns. While not charging Scalf, the IRB sharply criticized him for failing to keep proper financial records and even shredding documents after the election. [Detroit News, 5/13/04: Chicago Tribune, 5/10/04]