By Richard Weizel
NEW HAVEN Conn. (Reuters) - Former Connecticut Governor John Rowland advised a healthcare company in the state as part of a "ruse" to try to hide that he was being paid to help the congressional campaign of the company owner's wife, an executive testified on Wednesday.
Rowland, a Republican who was forced to resign from office a decade ago after pleading guilty to corruption charges, met with Apple Health Care Inc officials even as he was advising owner Lisa Wilson-Foley on her run for office, a company executive said during the final day of testimony in Rowland's two-week trial on charges of violating federal campaign laws.
"The contract was just a ruse," Brian Bedard, the company's chief operating officer and the sole defense witness, said under cross-examination by prosecutors.
Bedard told the jury at U.S. District Court in New Haven that some of the meetings he attended with Rowland and other campaign staff related to Wilson-Foley's campaign.
While Bedard previously testified that Foley never told him during Rowland's six-month, $35,000 contract with Apple that it was a cover for his consulting work on the campaign, he said Wednesday that Foley admitted to him the contract was a "sham" after he and his wife pleaded guilty in March to conspiring to make illegal campaign contributions.
Foley and Wilson-Foley had sought to conceal the help they received from the former governor, who had served 10 months in prison for corruption, prosecutors contend.
Bedard had previously testified for the defense that Rowland actively participated in Apple's efforts to modernize and deal with the threat of unionization, among other services.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys are scheduled to make their closing statements on Thursday, after which the jury will begin deliberating on whether Rowland, who did not take the stand, is guilty of seven counts of violating federal campaign laws.
The most serious of the charges Rowland faces, two counts of falsification of records in a federal investigation, carry a possible sentence of 20 years in prison.
(Editing by Scott Malone and Eric Walsh)