Looking almost as if he had never gone to jail in disgrace, Boesky wore a dark “power” suit. Gone were the flowing beard and long hair he grew I while serving much of a three-year prison term. His manner–abrupt amd testy–was vintage Boesky.
His testimony came at the securities-fraud trial of a once close friend, John A. Mulheren Jr., a stock trader. Reprising his own illegalities, Boesky told how he had aides stuff $800,000 in a briefcase as a payoff to convicted tipster Martin Siegel. Under a caustic cross-examination, Boesky disclosed for the first time that he deducted from his income taxes half of the $100 million he paid to settle insider-trading charges. As for his time in prison, Boesky’s habits seemed familiar. He acknowledged that he paid “a couple of chaps” a “few quarters” to do his laundry–against prison rules.
