By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
The Associated Press
November 21, 2000
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton granted a full and unconditional pardon Tuesday to a former U.S. ambassador who pleaded guilty in a Department of Housing and Urban Development scandal during the Reagan administration.
The Justice Department announced Clinton's pardon for Philip D. Winn of Denver, also a former housing official and developer, without comment on the president's reasons. That's the usual practice in presidential pardons, which are often issued near the year's end holidays.
Winn was a prominent Colorado developer who became an assistant HUD secretary during a portion of the Reagan administration. He later returned to his development firm, the Winn Group, and subsequently served as U.S. ambassador to Switzerland from August 1988 to August 1989.
As part of a bargain with prosecutors, Winn pleaded guilty on Feb. 9, 1993, to one count of scheming to give illegal gratuities to HUD officials who had authority to award federally subsidized housing to projects that his company was developing.
Winn agreed to cooperate fully with Independent Counsel Arlin Adams' continuing investigation of the scandal. He was sentenced in 1994 to two years' probation and ordered to pay a fine of $981,975.
Winn has an unpublished telephone number and could not be reached for comment. His attorney was out of the office and did not immediately return calls.
In his plea bargain, Winn admitted that in 1987 he let another HUD assistant secretary, Thomas Demery, have the free use of a condominium and car in Vail, Colo.
Court papers said that, in return, Demery allocated federal funds to projects in which Winn had a financial interest. Demery was charged with multiple felonies, later agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to accepting a $100,000 loan from a developer doing business with HUD and falsifying a receipt to make it appear that he paid $500 to stay in the Vail condo partly owned by Winn.
Prosecutors alleged that HUD officials in Washington steered housing grants to selected Winn-backed projects through a pattern of fraud, conspiracy and cronyism. They said the Winn Group received millions of dollars in HUD subsidies and tax credits during the 1980s.
Another former HUD official, Silvio J. DeBartolomeis, who went to work for the Winn Group, pleaded guilty in October 1992 to influence-peddling violations. He admitted preparing the phony receipt for Demery at Winn's direction.
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