Febryary 6, 2013 — Vito Giacalone, president of the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund, has been cleared of any wrongdoing by former attorney general L. Scott Harshbarger after a three-month investigation.
But that does not mean Giacalone is happy with what he found in Harshbarger’s report. In fact, he said, he was astonished to read — for the first time — details of the allegations against him, such as charges of misappropriation of funds and exerting improper influence on fishermen.
“There’s stuff in this report that shocked me,” Giacalone said.
The fund hired Harshbarger in October after state Senator Bruce Tarr and state Representative Ann-Margaret Ferrante, both of Gloucester, sent the group a letter suggesting it seek legal advice regarding questions that had been circulating in the fishing community for months.
Some fishermen were particularly concerned that there might be a conflict of interest in Giacalone’s roles as fund president, commercial fisherman, policy director for the Northeast Seafood Coalition, and owner of the property that houses a local seafood auction run by his sons.
“It was all about getting to the bottom of these vague but very serious allegations,” Giacalone said.
The investigation, however, concluded that “there is simply no credible basis to support the allegations, and, to the contrary, they are without merit,” Harshbarger said.
The exoneration of the fund and Giacalone did not surprise Al Cottone, who has been a Gloucester commercial fisherman for 30 years. However, like Giacalone, he was stunned by the details of the allegations.
“I read the report and my head almost exploded,” he said. “It was like mud-slinging in a high school locker room.”
Read the full story at the Boston Globe