Consortiumnews.com reports that one of the charges against Abramoff may have connections to the 2001 Florida murder of Konstantinos Boulis, from whom Abramoff and his associates bought the SunCruz casino line. While Abramoff has claimed to have no knowledge of the circumstances leading to the murder and no involvement, now that he has struck a plea deal, he will be forced to cooperate more fully with questioning, and could end up as a witness for the prosecution in the case. From the article:

Prosecutors alleged that in arranging the SunCruz deal, Abramoff and Kidan made a phony $23 million wire transfer as a fake down payment. In pursuing the casino deal, the Abramoff-Kidan group got help, too, from then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and Rep. Robert W. Ney, R-Ohio.

Abramoff impressed one lender by putting him together with DeLay in Abramoff’s skybox at FedEx Field during a football game between the Washington Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys. Ney placed comments in the Congressional Record criticizing Boulis and later praising the new Abramoff-Kidan SunCruz ownership team. [Washington Post, Sept. 28, 2005]

After the SunCruz sale, when tensions boiled over, Boulis and Kidan got into a fistfight. Kidan claimed that Boulis threatened his life. Two months later, however, Boulis was the one who was shot to death when a car pulled up next to him and a gunman opened fire.

Police have been investigating financial ties between the Abramoff-Kidan group and accused killers Moscatiello and Ferrari.