Former State Sen. Thomas Bromwell will retain his position as president and chief executive officer of Maryland’s largest workers’ compensation insurer despite his indictment in an alleged racketeering scheme involving minority contracting fraud.
The board of directors for the Injured Workers’ Insurance Fund decided unanimously to allow Bromwell to continue running the quasi-public insurance company, The Washington Post reported Friday.
Daniel E. McKew, chairman of the board, said the company had undergone unprecedented growth under the leadership of Bromwell, who left the legislature in 2002 to take his new position. He said it wouldn’t be fair to dismiss the former Democratic senator on the basis of the 30-count indictment.
“I don’t know if anyone actually read the entire indictment,” McKew told the newspaper. “What I know is we knew what we could do from a legal standpoint, and we knew how we felt about Senator Bromwell’s performance at IWIF.”
Bromwell’s pay package is potentially worth up to $250,000 a year. The government has moved to freeze his bank and investment accounts.
According to the indictment, Bromwell received nearly $193,000 from Poole and Kent, a prominent contracting firm, with the money disguised as payments for a no-show job for his wife, Mary Pat, who also was indicted. The company also provided free or discounted construction services on his home worth $85,000, the indictment said.
Robert Schulman, a lawyer for Bromwell, said the former senator and his wife maintain that they are innocent. He told the Post that Bromwell was “very pleased that the board has enough confidence in him to retain him as the CEO.”
The charges on which Bromwell was indicted cover the period before and after he left the Senate, but they do not involve his activities as CEO of the insurance fund.
As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Bromwell played a major role in developing laws in areas such as horse racing, insurance, electric deregulation and health care. Prosecutors allege that he used his influential position in the Senate to help get contracts for Poole and Kent, whose former chief executive officer, W. David Stoffregen, also was indicted.
Kent and Poole issued a statement saying it is fully cooperating with the investigation.
Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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