ILA Hit - Federal prosecutors file racketeering suit against Longshoremen's Association.

BYLINE: Joseph Bonney

Federal prosecutors have filed a long-threatened civil racketeering lawsuit that accuses the International Longshoremen's Association of being a mob-controlled enterprise. The lawsuit seeks to impose trusteeships on the ILA and several of its benefit programs, and to require new elections for the ILA Executive Council under supervision of a court-appointed officer. The 83-page lawsuit was filed on July 6 by the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn under RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The suit alleges that the ILA and several of its benefit programs were under control of the Genovese and Gambino mob families.The lawsuit seeks the permanent removal of four of the ILA's top six officers - John Bowers, president; Robert Gleason, secretary-treasurer; Albert Cernadas, executive vice president; and Harold Daggett, assistant general organizer. Cernadas and Daggett are awaiting trial this fall on extortion and conspiracy charges along with Arthur Coffey, international vice president from Miami.Listed as nominal defendants because of their fiduciary roles were the other two of the ILA's six top officials - Benny Holland, general vice president, and Gerald Owens, general organizer - and all of the ILA's 24 international vice presidents, as well as labor and management trustees of the coastwide Management-ILA health-care fund and the Metro-ILA …