Fugitive Ex-Connecticut Official Kosta Diamantis Sentenced to 7 Years in Prison — In Absentia, From Greece

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — The defendant’s chair was empty. It had been empty two weeks earlier, too, when Konstantinos “Kosta” Diamantis was supposed to be sentenced and instead informed his lawyer from overseas that he had fled to Greece. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Stefan R. Underhill stopped waiting and sentenced him anyway: 84 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for extorting bribes from contractors as one of the most powerful unelected officials in Connecticut state government.

Diamantis, 70, the former deputy budget director and director of the state’s Office of School Construction Grants and Review, was convicted last year on 21 counts — conspiracy, bribery, extortion, and making false statements to investigators. He is now a fugitive, a dual citizen of the United States and Greece, waging what prosecutors describe as a publicity campaign for a presidential pardon from abroad while the FBI tries to bring him home.

The No-Show

Diamantis failed to appear for his original sentencing on September 17. His attorney, Norm Pattis, told the court his client was in Greece. What followed was a scramble: federal authorities arranged for Diamantis to fly back. He bought a ticket for a flight departing Athens. A State Department-hired official was dispatched to escort him through the airport to a flight bound for JFK.

“He could have come back yesterday,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan N. Francis told the judge Wednesday. “All he had to do is show up.”

He didn’t. Prosecutors established that Diamantis traveled on a Greek passport, having left his U.S. passport in the government’s custody. Judge Underhill dismissed any suggestion that the flight was involuntary. And in a final indignity, Pattis read a lengthy statement from Diamantis into the record — the fugitive addressing the court that sentenced him, from a country that may never send him back.

What He Did

As director of the Office of School Construction Grants and Review — the agency that administers grants for every Connecticut public school construction project seeking state funding — Diamantis controlled the flow of millions of dollars. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, he used that control as a personal tollbooth.

Prosecutors proved that Diamantis demanded and received bribes from contractors connected to masonry company Acranom Masonry, Inc., whose principals John Duffy and Salvatore Monarca discussed the payoff scheme with Diamantis in electronic messages introduced at trial. In exchange for bribes and promises of bribes, Diamantis used his official position to help Acranom obtain and keep contracts on state-funded school jobs — including resolving a dispute on the renovation of Hartford’s Weaver High School around 2018, securing additional work on that project, and landing the masonry contract for the emergency rebuilding of Birch Grove Primary School in Tolland in approximately 2019.

When payments lagged, Diamantis threatened to remove Acranom from the Weaver and Birch Grove projects entirely. The shakedown, in other words, ran in both directions: pay to get in, keep paying to stay in.

“He can yell from Greece, he can yell from the moon, but he can’t outrun the evidence at trial,” Assistant U.S. Attorney David Novick, the lead prosecutor, said of Diamantis.

A Sentence Below the Guidelines

The 84-month sentence was shorter than the 121 to 151 months recommended by federal sentencing guidelines and sought by prosecutors. Underhill denounced Diamantis as “an affront to the public he once professed to serve” — then showed what he described as a measure of mercy tied to the defendant’s age.

“As bad as his crimes were, he does not deserve to be in prison for the rest of his life,” the judge said. At 70, a guidelines sentence would likely have amounted to a life term.

The financial consequences are still accumulating. Federal authorities are moving to seize Diamantis’ house in Farmington — Pattis told the court the government will videotape the home’s contents and that title vests in the United States at 9 a.m. Friday, leaving his client, in Pattis’ words, financially underwater. Restitution will be determined at a later date. And after the sentence was imposed, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong moved to revoke Diamantis’ state pension — an attempt to claw back the retirement benefits of a man convicted of selling his office.

What Comes Next

Diamantis remains at large, and his legal exposure is not finished. He is scheduled to face another federal trial in December, and prosecutors said Wednesday that “all options are on the table” regarding that case — a pointed phrase directed at a defendant they cannot currently put in a courtroom.

The extradition math is uncertain. Greece does not readily extradite its own citizens, and Diamantis holds Greek citizenship. Every month he remains abroad, the 84-month sentence waits for him like a tab he has already been handed but refuses to pay.

For Connecticut, the case closes a chapter on one of the most brazen corruption schemes in recent state history — a man who oversaw the money for building schools for children, and treated it as his own. The courtroom in Bridgeport was full on Wednesday. The defendant’s chair was empty. The sentence was entered anyway. Justice, in absentia, is still justice — it just has to wait for the fugitive to come home.