Ben Stevens has been told he's off the hook in the rapidly fading Alaska political corruption investigation, according to people with knowledge of the case.
Family friends of Stevens, the former Alaska Senate president and son of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, say he's recently received a letter from federal prosecutors that he won't face charges. A government source who spoke only on background confirmed that the letter was sent and that the long-running investigation has concluded without an indictment.
At the door of their family home in South Anchorage on Wednesday, Stevens' wife, Elizabeth, reviewed a draft of this story and said Stevens would have no comment.
Stevens, 52, was one of six state legislators whose offices were raided by the FBI on Aug. 31, 2006. Four were eventually charged and convicted.
In 2007, Stevens was identified as the recipient of bribes in the charges to which two officials of Veco Corp., Bill Allen and Rick Smith, pleaded guilty.
While Stevens served in the Legislature, he disclosed that Veco, an oil field services company long active in Alaska politics, paid him $243,250 between 2002 and 2006 for "consulting." But he never would say what work he did for the money, even after a citizen complained to the Alaska Public Offices Commission that the fees were thinly disguised bribes.
On the witness stand in the 2007 trial of former House Speaker Pete Kott, Smith, a Veco vice president, was asked which state senators he had bribed.
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