Bill J. Allen, an itinerant pipe fitter who rose to become one of the most powerful men in Alaska and a dominant figure in the state’s oil industry, then fell out of favor in a spectacular bribery and corruption scheme that also saw the downing of a US senator , died on June 29. He was 85.
His death was confirmed by Callahan-Edfast Mortuary & Crematory, a funeral home in Grand Junction, Colorado, where he had lived. A funeral home representative declined to say where he died or name a cause.
As president and chief executive of the Veco Corporation, an engineering and services company he co-founded in 1968, Mr. Allen sat at the crossroads of Alaska’s vast oil industry and the equally vast political interests that surrounded it.
He specialized in forging the ties between the two, shuffling money into the coffers of befriended politicians, who in turn kept companies like Veco working. By the early 2000s, Veco was the largest Alaska-based and Alaska-based company, with 3,500 employees, 18 subsidiaries and annual sales of $400 million.
mr. A New Mexico high school dropout, Allen enjoyed a reputation as a cowboy of sorts; brash and boastful, he almost openly distributed his financial generosity to shape state politics. He was fined $28,000 in 1985 for covertly pooling money from Veco employees and passing it on to various oil-friendly political candidates.
Eventually, he and one of his vice presidents, Rick Smith, came to an almost comically corrupt arrangement with a cabal of state politicians.
They regularly booked a suite at the Westmark Baranof, a luxury Art Deco hotel four blocks from the State Capitol in Juneau, where they handed out money and told their visitors what they wanted in return.
Mr. Allen and his circle seemed to enjoy their shamelessness. He and Mr. Smith always booked Suite 604 and Mr. Allen was always in the same seat. He boasted that he had $100 bills in his front pocket to make it easier to hand out to politician friends. A politician’s girlfriend even embroidered hats with the letters CBC, for ‘Corrupt Bastards Club’.
But Mr. Allen’s consistency proved his downfall. Federal agents got wind of the deal and installed a pinhole camera in the wall opposite his favorite chair. After recording hours and hours of illegal activity, they confronted Mr. Allen and Mr. Smith in August 2006. Mr. Allen agreed to cooperate that same day.
He would have felt extra pressure to play with the ball. As early as 2004, law enforcement officials had been investigating multiple allegations that Mr. Allen had sexually assaulted underage girls.
He pleaded guilty to charges of corruption and bribery and was sentenced to three years in prison and a $750,000 fine in exchange for his cooperation. The federal government dropped the sexual assault investigation, though the Justice Department denied that its decision to do so was part of the deal.
Allen became the government’s key witness in a series of corruption and bribery cases against state and federal politicians, several of whom were convicted.
The most prominent of these, Senator Ted Stevens, was indicted in 2008 on charges of failing to register a series of gifts from Mr. Allen, most notably an extensive renovation of the Senator’s home south of Anchorage.
The two had been friends – they even had a racehorse together – but that didn’t stop Mr. Allen dislikes making a critical statement against the senator and telling the jury that Mr. Stevens had used an intermediary to ask him not to bill for the renovation.
Three months later, an FBI whistleblower alleged that prosecutors withheld evidence from Mr. Stevens’ attorneys, including an interview in which Mr. Allen said he never spoke to Mr. Stevens’ agent. The Justice Department asked the judge to drop the charges, which he promptly did. (Mr. Stevens had not yet been convicted.)
Mr Stevens died in a plane crash in 2010.
William James Allen was born on April 6, 1937 in Socorro, NM, the son of Roger and Lola Allen. His father was a pipe fitter who at one point during the Great Depression was employed by the Works Progress Administration, the New Deal agency that built public infrastructure.
He is survived by his daughters, Tammy Kerrigan and Shannon West; his son, Mark Allen; at least nine grandchildren; and at least two great-grandchildren. Further information on survivors was not immediately available.
He dropped out of high school at age 15 to work in the New Mexico oil industry, first as a welder and then as a pipe fitter. He moved around and ended up in California before moving to Alaska around 1967.
His timing was perfect. A few months after his arrival, North America’s largest oil field was discovered near Prudhoe Bay, on Alaska’s northern slope. The industry exploded with activity and oil companies suddenly needed specialized services – equipment, logistics, repairs – to ramp up their operations.
Mr. Allen and a friend, Wayne Veltri, founded a service company they called the Veltri Company, which they later shortened to Veco. Mr. Allen bought out Mr. Veltri in 1970.
Although it started small, with just four employees, the company grew rapidly thanks to the oil boom in Alaska. By the late 1970s, Veco had expanded into gold mining, drilling and even shipbuilding. But a decline in oil industry revenues in the early 1980s forced Veco into bankruptcy.
Allen refused to nod, and in 1989 his fortunes turned when Exxon hired Veco to lead the cleanup after the tanker Exxon Valdez dumped 10.8 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound.
He also had a brief turn as a hero in 1988, when he and Veco helped rescue three gray whales trapped in ice at Point Barrow—a story told in the 2012 movie “Big Miracle,” starring Drew Barrymore. and John Krasinski.
Once back on his feet, Mr. Allen turned his energies to lobbying and politics. Although he claimed to be apolitical, he tended to support the Republicans. By the late 1990s, he was the center of gravity of Alaska politics, regularly ranked by the news media as the most powerful businessman in the state.
In 1989, he bought one of the state’s largest newspapers, The Anchorage Times. Pledged to take on his rival, The Anchorage Daily News, he ran his newspaper into the ground.
He closed it and sold the assets to The Daily News in 1992 on the condition that he be given a regular spot on the newspaper’s editorial page to express his conservative political views. He continued the column until 2007, when his legal troubles forced him to quit.
Allen sold Veco that same year, making him and his children about $146 million. They spent the money on racehorses and a private jet. One horse, Mine That Bird, won the 2009 Kentucky Derby.
He was released from prison in 2011, and later lived in New Mexico and Colorado. He continued to be dogged by sexual assault allegations, including a 2014 lawsuit by a woman who said he had a relationship with her when she was 15.
However, the federal government declined to reopen its investigation, even under pressure from Alaska’s two U.S. Senators, Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski, both Republicans.
