Boston contractor, owner charged with perjury related to jobsite deaths

A Massachusetts district attorney indicted Atlantic Coast Utilities, together with its owner, Laurence Moloney, and an personnel, Konstantinos Kollias, for perjury on Nov. 30.

The Wayland, Massachusetts-primarily based contractor allegedly lied on Mattocks-Higgins Affidavits of Workplace Safety, according to a push release from the office environment of Suffolk County District Legal professional Rachael Rollins. The varieties were being on file when the business secured permits to function on a Superior Avenue jobsite in Boston, in which two personnel were killed in February 2021.

Atlantic Coast Utilities was indicted on four counts of perjury, and Moloney was indicted on a few counts. Kollias, an worker, was indicted on one depend. The Mattocks-Higgins Affidavits are utilized to decide any past violations by a business, and whether or not the organization was in the OSHA Serious Violator Enforcement Method. 

The district attorney’s business office alleged that the corporation, Moloney and Kollias, underneath pain of perjury, submitted the Mattocks-Higgins Affidavits to the city of Boston declaring that the corporation experienced under no circumstances been cited by OSHA for fines, when in actuality it experienced been issued citations by the office basic safety agency on September 8, 2016, and once more on June 3, 2019, according to the district attorney’s place of work.  

The business submitted the affidavits 4 times proclaiming that it had no background of OSHA violations. Moloney submitted these varieties three moments, on a few different dates, when Kollias submitted the affidavit on a person celebration. Each and every submission of the variety guide to a perjury indictment.

The two personnel, Jordy Alexander Castaneda Romero, 27, and Juan Carlos Figueroa Gutierrez, 33, were being killed when a dump truck struck and pushed them into a 9-foot-deep excavated trench on the Significant Road jobsite. OSHA to begin with fined the company and Moloney $1.3 million. Moloney had repeated violations and a history of evading OSHA fines, according to the company.

Because 2001, Moloney has been investigated 6 occasions and fined an further 14 instances, according to a Section of Labor press release from August. Prior to this February, Moloney had $81,242 in fines, of which $73,542 was unpaid and has been referred to personal debt selection, in accordance to the launch.