Former Honolulu liquor
inspector testifies to bribes
A former Honolulu liquor control investigator testified yesterday that owners of hostess bars and strip clubs gave investigators cash in envelopes in exchange for ignoring violations.
Charles Wiggins, who admits he took money from bar owners, testified that he decided to work undercover for the FBI because payoffs and corruption at the Liquor Commission had "gotten progressively worse until, in my opinion, it was an agency out of control."
The investigators split the cash in their cars or at the Liquor Commission office, he said.
Wiggins took the stand yesterday in the second day of the federal corruption trial of two former investigators.
Retired liquor supervisor Harvey T. Hiranaka and former investigator Eduardo C. Mina are on trial in U.S. District Court for allegedly taking money from bar owners in exchange for not enforcing liquor laws.
Both men are charged with racketeering and conspiracy to racketeer. As part of the alleged ongoing criminal activity or racketeering, Hiranaka is charged with nine counts of extortion for allegedly taking money from nine different clubs in exchange for not enforcing regulations. Mina faces three counts of extortion.
If convicted, each man faces 20 years in prison for each count.
Much of the government's case rests on excerpts from more than 500 hours of tapes taken when Wiggins wore a wire while working as an investigator for the commission. The tapes were recorded between September 2000 and May 3, 2001, as Wiggins worked undercover for the FBI.
Yesterday, the jury was outfitted with headphones to listen to scratchy tapes of liquor inspectors talking in a shorthand slang as they made their rounds visiting clubs and allegedly taking bribes.
Hiranaka's public defender, Pamela Byrne, has argued that the money, often paid in red or white envelopes, were not bribes but gifts from bar owners. She argued that a local culture of gift-giving has been twisted by the prosecution into an extortion scheme.
In one of a dozen conversations jurors heard yesterday, Wiggins talked with Hiranaka and another former inspector, Bill Richardson, about an alleged payoff from the owner of the Emerald City nightclub on Dec. 26, 2000. The transcribe reads:
Richardson: She gave me two bills, tell me oh thank you ...
Hiranaka: Oh wow, you get two. Wow.
Richardson: Why, you guys only got one? (Laughs)
Wiggins: I never get nothing.
Wiggins testified that Hiranaka's "philosophy'' was that once an inspector took money from a bar "you never wrote them up."