"HARTFORD, Conn. – Connecticut's governor stripped a top fraud investigator of her duties Monday after The Associated Press reported that she had testified to receiving many of the same gifts that toppled former Gov. John G. Rowland's administration.
Kristine Ragaglia, head of the Medicaid fraud unit, was reassigned to administrative duties at Gov. M. Jodi Rell's order, pending an investigation, Department of Social Services spokesman Matthew Barrett said. As a classified employee, she can't immediately be fired.
Ragaglia testified in 2004 before a grand jury investigating corruption in the Rowland administration.
In sealed grand jury transcripts, FBI reports and personal diaries examined by the AP, Ragaglia detailed how she took the same expensive hotel getaways, lavish dinners and limousine rides that were used to bribe the officials in Rowland's administration.
She testified that she took the luxuries while head of the state Department of Children and Families and helped steer a $57 million detention center contract to a developer who had provided gifts to Rowland.
Asked about the documents Sunday night, Ragaglia said she didn't know that developer William Tomasso, who has since pleaded guilty to corruption charges, was paying for her lavish trips. She noted that her cooperation helped send corrupt officials to prison.
“I did my part to make it right,†she told the AP.
Prosecutors agreed not to use her testimony against her, a deal that allowed her to keep her $104,000-a-year job, though she faces a civil case brought by the state attorney general.
“The fact that she is heading up a fraud unit, having defrauded the state, I see no humor in that,†said Rell, who has been criticized by Democrats for keeping on too many Rowland-hired staff members while campaigning for clean government.
Ragaglia, a 44-year-old former assistant attorney general, ran the child protection agency from 1997 until 2003, when she left amid the FBI's burgeoning investigation. After a brief second stint at the attorney general's office, she was hired by the state's Department of Social Services as head of the fraud unit.
In documents reviewed by the AP, Ragaglia testified that she sometimes wrote letters or placed phone calls to push a project along. Other times, she said, she just looked the other way.
Ragaglia's admissions have never been made public because all those charged in the case avoided trials by striking plea deals.
Rowland pleaded guilty in late 2004 to one corruption count and served 10 months; he is now on four months of home confinement. Tomasso and Peter Ellef, Rowland's top aide, pleaded guilty to corruption and fraud charges, and were sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison.
Ragaglia wrote in her diary in 1998 that Ellef introduced her to Tomasso and outlined plans to replace an antiquated juvenile detention center with the Connecticut Juvenile Training School, a project touted as Ragaglia's greatest hope for success.
Rowland hailed it as a key step toward reforming an agency that was under federal oversight and reeling from a series of child deaths in state custody. "
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