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Now, we continue our Eyewitness News exclusive investigation on the Plunder Dome Tapes tonight. Eyewitness News has obtained all 58 of the secretly recorded FBI tapes used in the trial of former Mayor Vincent �Buddy� Cianci. Cianci is on two tapes talking with city building board member Steven Antonson. Eyewitness News Investigative Reporter Jack White joins us with this exclusive look inside the Plunder Dome trial.
Steve Antonson considered Mayor Cianci a friend. He had worked on the mayor�s campaigns and had done electrical work at the mayor�s house and on his boat.
But the secret FBI tapes show the friendship ended during the Plunder Dome investigation.
Steven Antonson was a member of the city�s Building Board. The board was asked to act on renovation permits being sought by the exclusive University Club on the city�s East Side.
Federal investigators were trying to show Cianci blocked the permits because the club had refused him a membership.
The FBI had been taping conversations involving other city officials with the help of Providence businessman Antonio Freitas.  He agreed to help investigators by letting them place recording devices in his basement office, and by carrying a hidden camera in a briefcase.
During a taped conversation with the chairman of the city�s board of tax assessment review, Joseph Pannone, Freitas is told he has to pay bribes to get his taxes lowered and to get paid for work he�s done for the city.
There was a reference to Frank- who is Frank Corrente, the mayor�s top aide. who also was caught on tape taking bribe money from Freitas.
David Ead, the vice-chairman of the tax review board, is captured bragging about three bribes he said he set up for Cianci.
And then there�s the mayor talking with Anston the day Antonson was interviewed by the FBI.
The longest serving mayor in Providence history was about to find out exactly what the FBI had. And what they had resulted in a 97 count indictment that said Cianci and his codefendants ran a criminal enterprise out of City hall for nine years. An enterprise that survived on extortion, bribes, kickbacks and money laundering.
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