Testimony exposes turmoil at Cook Inlet Region Inc.Roy Huhndorf, the longtime chief executive of Cook Inlet Region Inc., said in court Thursday that he emerged from retirement and rejoined the board of the Anchorage-based Native corporation because of persistent rumors that Carl Marrs, his hand-picked successor, was wasting shareholder money on extravagances like jets and a fishing lodge. … In the middle of that 2002 [CIRI] election, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens voiced strong support for Marrs in an opinion column published in the Anchorage Daily News. Huhndorf testified that he was shocked that Stevens would interfere in a CIRI board election. It later would turn out that Stevens was a guest at the Bristol Bay retreat leased by AIC, the Golden Horn. After the Daily News reported last year that he had stayed at the lodge in possible violation of Senate ethics rules, Stevens admitted being a guest there in 2001, 2002 and 2003, but had paid only one year. He sent checks totaling more than $2,000 to cover his lodging for the other two. Stevens was also a partner in race horses with Marrs and other Alaska businessmen, including former Veco chief executive Bill Allen, who pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges in April and is cooperating with the FBI. |
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