Former UAW leader is accused of conspiracy to embezzle funds
Federal prosecutors Thursday charged a former president of the United Auto Workers union, Dennis Williams, with conspiring to embezzle union funds for personal expenses and luxury travel. He is the 15th person accused in a broad investigation into corruption at the union.
Williams, 67, the UAW president from 2014 to 2018, used union money to pay for private villas in Palm Springs, California; expensive cigars; golfing apparel; greens fees at golf courses; and lavish dinners, according to documents filed by prosecutors in federal court in Detroit.
The Justice Department contends that Williams conspired with his immediate successor, Gary Jones, who pleaded guilty to similar charges in June, and several other senior UAW officials.
“The charges today are further steps forward in our relentless effort to ensure that the over 400,000 men and women of the UAW have honest and ethical leadership,” Matthew Schneider, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said in a statement. “The UAW’s members deserve leaders dedicated to serving the members and their families, not serving themselves.”
Lawyers for Williams did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A person close to Williams previously denied to The New York Times some of the accusations against him.
The investigation of the UAW dates back to at least 2015 and has resulted in guilty pleas from at least 11 union officials and three former executives of Fiat Chrysler.
“Any violation of Mr. Williams’s oath of office and his responsibility to oversee our members and their sacred dues money should rightfully face criminal penalty,” the union’s current president, Rory Gamble, said in a statement. “Today’s development is a sad day for UAW members.”
Gamble, who became president after Jones resigned in November, has changed financial practices and sought to increase cooperation with prosecutors.
The union stopped paying Williams’ legal fees this year and had him pay back $56,000 for personal travel and housing that had been charged to the UAW. Last year, the union took back a luxury retirement home that it had built for Williams at a UAW lakeside resort in northern Michigan.
Charges against prominent union leaders are rare. Before Jones was charged in March, the last major union president to be accused in a criminal case was Roy Williams, then the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He was indicted in 1981 and accused of conspiring to bribe a senator in an attempt to derail the deregulation of the trucking industry.
A few years earlier, Joseph Tonelli, a top AFL-CIO official who was also president of the United Paperworkers International Union, was charged with helping to embezzle $360,000 from the union. Both officials from that earlier era were convicted.
The UAW investigation has turned on the cooperation of several top union officials. Under an agreement with federal prosecutors, Jones acknowledged using more than $1 million in union funds for vacation rentals, golf outings, clothing, liquor and expensive meals. According to prosecutors, Jones spent some $60,000 just on cigars and smoking paraphernalia.