DeBartolo: Edwards Got $400K

March 27, 2000 / 4:53 PM EST / CBS/AP

Former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr. testified Monday that ex-Gov. Edwin Edwards demanded and received $400,000 from him to ensure that his application for a riverboat casino license would be approved.

A day after DeBartolo allegedly gave the former four-term governor the money in stacks of $100 bills in a briefcase at the San Francisco airport the Louisiana gambling board unanimously awarded a license to DeBartolo.

DeBartolo's testimony has been the most anticipated in Edwards' federal racketeering trial, not only because he is one of the richest men in the country and a former NFL owner, but also because he is the only witness who claims Edwards extorted money and collected it. Other witnesses have testified that Edwards had his friends and son demand money from them.

Federal prosecutors say Edwards and his son Stephen, along with a state senator and four other men, manipulated the licensing of riverboat casinos before and after the governor left office in 1996. The ex-governor could face 350 years in prison and $7.2 million in fines if convicted. Stephen could get 305 years.

DeBartolo pleaded guilty to failing to report a felony in the case, agreed to pay up to $1 million in fines and was placed on two years' probation. He has given up his casino license and was forced to turn control of the 49ers over to his sister.

He testified in a packed courtroom Monday that he paid Edwards for help getting state approval for a casino license in the Shreveport-Bossier City area.

DeBartolo said Edwards told him without ever saying the words

how much money he would need during a meeting at a bar at a Baton Rouge hotel, one night before the gambling board's final hearing for riverboat applicants.

DeBartolo said the former governor slipped him a piece of paper with "$400,000" written on it, and told him, "This has to be taken care of by next week or there's going to be a serious problem with your license."

"Did you think you had any choice but to pay Edwin Edwards?" prosecutor Mike Magner asked.

"I had no choice," DeBartolo responded.

During the same meeting, DeBartolo said, Edwards also said that he wanted a 1 percent interest in the casino.

One week later, DeBartolo said, he put a briefcase filled with $100 bills in the trunk of his car and picked up Edwards at the San Francisco airport and drove to a diner five minutes away.

DeBartolo said he asked Edwards: "How do you plan on moving this money through the airport? It's in a briefcase and it's got to go through X-ray machines. That's a red flag and they're going to know that something's going on."

"He said: `That's not going to be a problem'," DeBartolo said. "He opened up his shirt and showed me a belt chest-high. That's where he intended to put te money."

After the lunch, DeBartolo said, he took Edwards to the airport, where the former governor took the briefcase and went inside.

"The next morning, he called me and told me that the board had voted and we won the approval six to nothing," DeBartolo said.

DeBartolo said that even though Edwards had been out of office for a year, he remained powerful because he had made many appointments and "basically could do anything he wanted to get done."

DeBartolo's relationship with Edwards grew out of the friendship between Edwards and DeBartolo's father, who built the Louisiana Downs race track in Shreveport and a shopping mall in New Orleans during the 1970s.

DeBartolo Sr. paid Edwards $155,000 to do legal work at Louisiana Downs while Edwards was between terms during the early 1980s and 1990s, DeBartolo acknowledged.

When asked under cross-examination whether his father paid Edwards the money for legitimate purposes, DeBartolo said: "I am not about to speculate on what he did with the governor."

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