Former CT legislator and deputy budget director Konstantinos Diamantis arrested
Former legislator and deputy budget director Konstantinos Diamantis, who emerged at the center of a sweeping, statewide investigation two years ago of school construction practices, was arrested by federal authorities earlier this morning in what was shaping up to be just one of several such arrests.
Federal officials early Thursday would not discuss the charges against Diamantis or anything about the investigation until he is presented in the court sometime Thursday and the indictment in the case is unsealed.
Two other people connected to the investigation quietly pleaded guilty earlier this week to charges that were not specified, and at last two more arrests are expected, sources familiar with the matter said.
Thomas Carson, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office confirmed the arrest of Diamantis. But of additional arrests, he said he “can neither confirm nor deny at this time.” He said Diamantis will be presented in U.S. District Court in Hartford at some point Thursday.
Diamantis and at least one of the others charged earlier this week figured prominently in a now nearly two and one-half year long, federal investigation of a program under which the state finances local public school construction.
Diamantis ran the school construction program and was involved in other construction projects, such as the state pier renovation in New London.
He resigned as manager of the school construction program and was removed as deputy budget director after federal prosecutors served a sweeping grand jury subpoena on the state in Oct. 2021 for records showing how hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent on schools and hundreds of million more on a plan to turn the state pier into an offshore wind energy hub.
The subpoena read in part: “Please provide all non-privileged electronic communications (including e-mail and text messages, and all attachments thereto), from January 1, 2018, to the present, involving Konstantinos Diamantis, concerning: (1) the planning, bidding, awarding, and implementation (including the construction process) of school construction projects; (2) the planning, bidding, awarding and implementation of hazardous materials abatement projects; and (3) the Connecticut State Pier infrastructure improvements project.”
The subpoena specifically ordered the state to locate records associated with Diamantis’ daughter, Anastasia; a school construction consultant for whom Anastasia Diamantis formerly worked; and the names of school construction programs financed by the state under the elder Diamantis’ tenure.
A project on which the grand jury focused was the emergency – meaning competitive bidding was waived – construction of a $46 million elementary school in Tolland, a project personally managed by Diamantis, according to a variety of local officials.
One of the companies Tolland was instructed to hire on a no bid basis was construction manager Construction Advocacy Professionals of Moosup, known as CAP and owned by Antonietta DiBenedetto Roy. Not long before, Roy had hired Diamantis’s daughter.
One casualty of the school construction investigation was former Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo, who Gov. Ned Lamont forced to resign. Colangelo appointed Anastasia Diamantis, then working for CAP, to a patronage position in the Division of Criminal Justice. At the same time, Colangelo was lobbying Diamantis and the state budget office to approve a raise for state prosecutors.
Colangelo’s appointment of Diamantis’s daughter became public as the federal subpoena was being served on the state and Lamont hired former U.S. Attorney Stanley L. Twardy Jr. to look into the circumstances of the patronage appointment. Anastasia Diamantis was asked by Twardy, among other things, how she came to be hired by CAP. She said told Twardy, that CAP’s owner telephoned her “out of the blue” with a job offer.
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