Connecticut official convicted of bribery says he is in Greece and still claims a political plot

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A former Connecticut school-construction official who skipped his federal sentencing last week says he is in Greece and still denies the bribery verdict that left him facing more than a decade in prison.

Kosta Diamantis, speaking to WTNH News 8 by FaceTime on Sunday at about 12:40 p.m. EDT, said he reached Greece before sentencing day. He would not say how he left the United States. Prosecutors and his own lawyer have said he is a Greek citizen. The government mapped a route from Connecticut to Florida, then the Bahamas and a flight to London.

A jury last year convicted him on 21 counts. Federal prosecutors said that while he ran Connecticut’s Office of School Construction Grants & Review he extorted and took bribes from two firms that won work on state-funded school projects.

What he says

Diamantis cast the case as politics, not crime. He said officials around Governor Ned Lamont used him as a scapegoat when the governor faced ethics questions before the 2022 election.

Those questions involved two no-bid COVID testing contracts with Sema4. First Lady Annie Lamont is a managing director at a firm that held Sema4 shares. The Lamonts have denied any role in awarding the contracts, pledged to give any stock profits to charity and keep a recusal list for her investments.

Diamantis said “scripted” retribution and “legal warfare” produced a corruption case to discredit him and shift attention from the administration. He pointed to ties in Connecticut’s legal circle, including that Lamont’s former chief legal counsel is married to the former acting U.S. attorney who led the office in 2021–22. In an email sent the day before sentencing he wrote that Lamont, state officials and “Connecticut’s tight-knit legal aristocracy” had scripted the investigation.

Asked for public proof, he said the picture is in sealed pre-trial discovery.

What the court heard

His trial defence was that money from the two companies was legal fees and an introduction payment, not bribes. Prosecutors used texts and testimony from cooperating witnesses who pleaded guilty to bribing him. In one exchange he threatened to replace a mason on a school job if he was not paid.

Ryan McGuigan, a defence lawyer and former state prosecutor, said the conspiracy claim “doesn’t hold a lot of water,” just as the trial defence did not. Overlaps among lawyers in a small state, he said, are normal, not proof of a plot.

Chris Mattei, a former federal prosecutor who led the Connecticut U.S. attorney’s public-corruption unit, said there was “no basis” for the claims and that Diamantis still refused to accept the verdict or its consequences.

Pardon and extradition

Diamantis said he fled in part to be heard and hopes President Donald Trump will grant a pardon. Greece generally does not extradite its own citizens, which would complicate any U.S. effort to bring him back.

He said he has friends in Greece after decades of travel there, does not want to live as a fugitive for the rest of his life, and wants to return to his children and grandchildren — but only if a pardon or a successful appeal means he would not be arrested on arrival.

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