Konstantinos Diamantis, the former state official under federal investigation, showed a particular interest in his daughter seeking state employment in a number of cases in early 2020, according to documents released Friday.
The documents, obtained Friday by The Connecticut Mirror through a Freedom of Information Act request, were compiled in response to a federal appeal issued in October.
Many of the documents had been part of the independent investigation into the case commissioned by Governor Ned Lamont and conducted by Stanley Twardy of the law firm Day Pitney.
But others offer new insights into the extent to which Diamantis defended on behalf of his daughter Anastasia.
[The Kosta Diamantis timeline]
The Twardy report revealed that Diamantis was embroiled in Anastasia’s job search. It reported that he pressured an official of the State Administrative Services Department to hire Anastasia for a human resources position in November 2018, and that in June 2020 he had forwarded an email to Anastasia for a job within the Criminal Justice Division – which he had originally received from former Attorney General Richard Colangelo. Colangelo hired Anastasia Diamantis a few days later for another position in his office. Colangelo, who was accused of pressuring Diamantis to help provide raises for his staff, resigned in early February.
But these were not the only cases where Costa Diamantis became involved in Anastasia’s employment efforts, the documents show.
Two state jobs
On January 2, 2020, Anastasia Diamantis received an email from a state human resources official regarding a job at the State Department of Education. The email stated that the position of staff assistant for which Anastasia had applied was being canceled and would be repositioned with various job responsibilities in the future.
She forwarded the email to her father two days later without any comment, the records show. Minutes later, Costa Diamantis forwarded the email to his boss, Office of Policy and Management Secretary Melissa McCaw, without comment.
“She sent it to me in my personal email just to let me know what had happened, and I forwarded it to my state email so I could print it at work and have a record of it,” Diamantis said. “The only reason the personal email ended up in my state email is because I do not have a printer at home and wanted to print it.”
Just about a month later, on February 6, 2020, Diamantis learned that the newly created Workforce Competitiveness Office needed an executive assistant, a job that paid up to $ 135,000.
Diamantis forwarded the job description to the then governor’s chief operating officer, Paul Mounds, and asked “Is it [this] something about Anastasia?
Mounds responded by telling Diamantis that anyone who would take the position would eventually report to the State Office of Policy and Management, the agency he helped run: “I am agnostic about who for this position. With that said, this ES position is current in the DECD and is required to shift [to] OPM in future budget corrections. ”
“I was just curious about a job opening and wondering if maybe my daughter would qualify for it,” Diamantis said on Saturday. “I was just asking a question to see what the answer might be.”
Other inclusions
The documents also raise questions about a second job Anastasia Diamantis took in July 2020 at a company called Construction Advocacy Professionals (CAP), a company that was the construction manager on the Birch Grove Elementary School project in Tolland. Costa Diamantis, who was director of the State Office for Grants and School Building Review at the OPM at the time, oversaw state funding for the project.
Anastasia Diamantis was hired by CAP in July 2020 after the company received a $ 70,000 contract to oversee the construction of portable classrooms at the school. Weeks after Anastasia was hired, the company received a $ 460,000 contract amendment to oversee the construction of a new school in the country.
Costa Diamantis denied that he had any role in hiring his daughter, but in an email sent July 2, he copied his daughter while discussing the project with CAP owner Antonietta Roy. It is unclear whether Anastasia was employed by CAP on that date. According to the Twardy report, she started her hiring sometime in July.
The email addressed questions from Tolland officials about the first phase of the school project – the installation of modular classrooms for students to use during construction.
‘Hint hint’
Documents also show that Diamantis had an email exchange with Rep. Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford and House Majority Leader, in July 2020. Rojas begins by thanking Diamantis and McCaw for “their support of many of my colleagues’ requests for connections.” He continues to raise questions about projects in Newington and South Windsor, and after a few exchanges, it seems to end with “Sounds like a plan”.
Diamantis responded to that email with a line: “Furthermore, I hope my daughter has a good room in the trinity. Tip for advice. ” Diamantis apparently referred to one of his other daughters, not Anastasia.
Rojas is the president’s chief of staff at Trinity College Hartford.
The guard replied: “Hmmmmm. Let’s see if states ensure that we can provide the safest and healthiest[y] an experience as much as possible 🙂 ”
Diamantis replied, “Perfecto.”
“Every time I saw Jason, he would ask me how my daughter was doing at school because he knew she was going to Trinity and I knew he worked there,” Diamantis said on Saturday. “We talked about school all the time.”
Rojas said on Saturday that he remembers the exchange and that he took it as a “comment on the site and not serious”.
“It was very meek, and that’s how I got it,” Rojas said. “Obviously, given the circumstances now, it may not look so good, but I did not take it seriously. I could not have helped him anyway. “The dormitory rooms have been set by lot, with which I have no connection.”
More documents will come
“Lamont’s lawyer, Nora Dannehy, said the documents released to the CT Mirror on Friday – over 6,000 PDF files – were only part of what was handed over to the federal authorities last year and that the rest will be published once verified.” privileges and other exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act. ”
The Connecticut Mirror requested the documents summoned in early February, shortly after the existence of the federal investigation was discovered. They include thousands of pages of bid documents, meeting minutes and emails.
Documents show that Costa Diamantis was not a prolific email sender, often responding to lengthy messages from others with answers of just a few words.
A large federal jury issued a call to the State Department of Administrative Services for all emails, text messages and attachments involving Diamantis and a wide range of construction projects on October 20, 2021.
Eight days later, he was removed as the second highest state budget official in the Office of Policy and Management and placed on administrative leave as director of OSCG & R. Instead of accepting leave of absence, Diamantis chose to retire.
The call to the DAS on October 20 specifically sought data from state contracts for school renovations, the elimination of hazardous damages and the New State Wharf in New London, along with emails and text messages that included, among others , Anastasia Diamantis and CAP, where she worked part. -koha.
Federal authorities later submitted a second request with more than 50 search terms for the state to search between Diamantis emails and text messages.
The “search” list includes the names of several contractors, including D’Amato Construction, which received a job offer for the Tolland school, as well as several other school projects. The search list also included the words “wedding,” “gift,” and “FBI.”
Many of the emails released Friday focused on the Birch Grove elementary school project in Tolland, which has been a key part of the federal investigation.
Tolland School Supervisor Walter Willett has since claimed that local officials in Tolland were under pressure from Diamantis to select D’Amato Construction for the school construction project. Other school officials have made similar claims.
Correction
An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the name of the construction management firm that hired Anastasia Diamantis. It’s Construction Advocacy Professionals.