Boston contractor, owner charged with perjury related to jobsite deaths

A Massachusetts district attorney indicted Atlantic Coast Utilities, alongside with its operator, Laurence Moloney, and an worker, Konstantinos Kollias, for perjury on Nov. 30.

The Wayland, Massachusetts-primarily based contractor allegedly lied on Mattocks-Higgins Affidavits of Place of work Basic safety, in accordance to a push launch from the place of work of Suffolk County District Legal professional Rachael Rollins. The sorts were on file when the organization secured permits to operate on a High Street jobsite in Boston, where two staff were killed in February 2021.

Atlantic Coast Utilities was indicted on four counts of perjury, and Moloney was indicted on three counts. Kollias, an worker, was indicted on a single rely. The Mattocks-Higgins Affidavits are utilised to decide any earlier violations by a enterprise, and no matter whether the firm was in the OSHA Critical Violator Enforcement Plan. 

The district attorney’s business office alleged that the enterprise, Moloney and Kollias, below pain of perjury, submitted the Mattocks-Higgins Affidavits to the town of Boston saying that the company experienced hardly ever been cited by OSHA for fines, when in truth it experienced been issued citations by the workplace security agency on September 8, 2016, and all over again on June 3, 2019, according to the district attorney’s office environment.  

The corporation submitted the affidavits 4 moments saying that it had no background of OSHA violations. Moloney submitted these varieties 3 periods, on 3 different dates, while Kollias submitted the affidavit on 1 situation. Every single submission of the form direct to a perjury indictment.

The two staff, Jordy Alexander Castaneda Romero, 27, and Juan Carlos Figueroa Gutierrez, 33, had been killed when a dump truck struck and pushed them into a 9-foot-deep excavated trench on the High Road jobsite. OSHA at first fined the business and Moloney $1.3 million. Moloney experienced recurring violations and a heritage of evading OSHA fines, in accordance to the company.

Due to the fact 2001, Moloney has been investigated 6 occasions and fined an added 14 times, according to a Office of Labor push 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 collection, according to the release.