Chapman Witness: I Was Fired for Testimony

Carol Boykin, who was the chief investment officer with the Maryland pension agency, testified that US Attorney Thomas DiBiagio said her job would be safe during the corruption investigation into fellow former pension official Nathan Chapman, according to a news report on TheWBALChannel.com.

“He said that my job would be protected as long as I was a witness on the Chapman case,” Boykin testified. She said DiBiagio wanted her help to gather documents and to help understand investment matters relating to the case. “I cooperated in full with the requests of the US attorney’s office,” Boykin testified in Baltimore federal court.

But Boykin was fired in April 2003. In an e-mail to prosecutor Jefferson Gray at the time, she wrote that she had been terminated, with an option to resign. “I believe that this is an incidence of retaliatory termination as a result of my testimony on the grand jury, which was damaging to several board members,” Boykin wrote.

Boykin offered Monday’s testimony under cross examination by Chapman’s attorneys. In her e-mail, Boykin wrote that she was told by agency board member Bruce Harrison that board member George Tydings believed Boykin should be terminated “since he had lost confidence in me, particularly because I did not inform the board about the Chapman matter.”

In her testimony, Boykin said prosecutor DiBiagio “did not do anything to alter the course” of her firing. “He did not protect my job,” she said.

Chapman is accused of mail fraud, wire fraud, securities fraud and other crimes in the investment of retirement system funds in his company’s stock (See  Chapman Pleads Not Guilty in Maryland Fraud Case  ). Chapman, who served as chairman of the state university Board of Regents, was charged with fraudulently using state pension funds to boost his own company’s stock price. Maryland ‘s $29 billion pension system lost nearly $5 million in the transactions.

Also in her testimony, Boykin said she was concerned about Chapman’s under performance as an agency fund manager. She said that he wanted to manage more of the agency’s money, despite the lower-than-expected performance, but that she didn’t take his request seriously.

The system is responsible for the pensions of more than 250,000 teachers, police officers, firefighters and other government workers. Boykin began working for the system in 1999 and was paid $116,171 a year as the top investment strategist, which has been trying to recover from poor performance and scandal.