Kosta Diamantis Rejects Plea Deal in Second Bribery Case
Former CT deputy budget director Kosta Diamantis rejected a plea deal in a second federal bribery case, heading toward trial on corruption charges.
Konstantinos Diamantis turned down a plea deal Monday in federal court in Bridgeport, setting up what looks like a second bribery trial for the 69-year-old former state official who’s already been convicted on 21 counts of corruption.
The hearing at U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut before Judge Stefon Underhill had been docketed as a change-of-plea proceeding. It didn’t go that way. Attorneys for both sides went into chambers with the judge, the courtroom emptied out, and Diamantis walked away without entering any plea.
His attorney, Norm Pattis, was brief outside court. “We will be filing a motion to continue to trial,” Pattis said. “That’s really all I can say.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney David Novick told reporters a trial looked likely, though he wouldn’t get into the specifics of what the government had offered. The scheduled trial date of April 27 is now expected to slip while the two sides work out a new calendar with the court.
What the second case is about
The charges Diamantis is now likely to fight at trial involve a Bristol eye doctor named Helen Zervas. According to federal prosecutors, Diamantis leaned on staff at the state Department of Social Services to kill a 2020 audit examining Zervas’ Medicaid and Medicare billing. The cost of that favor, prosecutors say, was nearly $100,000 in bribes that Zervas paid to Diamantis.
Zervas has already pleaded guilty. So has former state Rep. Christopher Ziogas, a Bristol associate of Diamantis who prosecutors say was cut into the payments as well. Both are expected to be government witnesses when this goes to trial.
The case could also drag in some of the most senior figures from Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration. According to CT Mirror, prosecutors may call former Office of Policy and Management Secretary Melissa McCaw and former Department of Social Services Commissioner Diedre Gifford. That’s not a footnote. If either testifies about what they knew or when, it puts the corruption questions directly inside the upper levels of state government during Lamont’s tenure.
The first conviction
Diamantis wasn’t coming into Monday’s hearing with a clean record. In 2021, he was convicted on 21 counts that included bribery, extortion, conspiracy and lying to federal investigators, all stemming from his time running the state’s Office of School Construction Grants and Review.
That case was ugly. Prosecutors documented how Diamantis steered fat school construction contracts to the owners of Acranom Masonry on projects in Tolland, Hartford and New Britain. Text messages, bank records and emails showed him negotiating payments, pressing contractors for cash and threatening to yank them off jobs if they didn’t come through. More than $75,000 in bribes moved hands.
That conviction already carries real sentencing weight. A second trial, with Zervas and Ziogas both flipped and cooperating, gives the government two witnesses who can testify directly about how the 2020 scheme operated from the inside.
What this means
Diamantis spent years near the top of Connecticut’s state budget apparatus and school construction system. He wasn’t peripheral. He had real authority over money, contracts and audits, and prosecutors say he sold all of it.
The rejected plea means a jury will now sort through the second set of allegations. It’s a significant gamble. Pattis is a skilled trial lawyer, and federal convictions aren’t guaranteed. But Diamantis already has 21 counts against him, and now he’s looking at a second courtroom fight with cooperating witnesses lined up against him.
A new trial date hasn’t been set. The April 27 date won’t hold.