A federal grand jury in New York is investigating whether Teamsters President Ron Carey received illegal campaign kickbacks and employer contributions in last year's bitterly contested election against James P. Hoffa for control of the 1.4 million-member union, sources confirmed yesterday.  

At the same time, Barbara Zack Quindel, the federal official charged with overseeing the election, has yet to certify Carey's victory, pending the outcome of her own investigation of the allegations. Quindel has the power to order a rerun of the election. Sources said yesterday they did not expect Quindel to issue a ruling until after the grand jury completed its investigation.  

The Carey campaign, meanwhile, said it has returned more than $200,000 in campaign contributions that opponents allege were illegal.  

Nathaniel Charney, general counsel to the Carey campaign, abruptly resigned from his New York law firm last month. Bruce Simon, senior partner in the firm Simon Cohen & Weiss, confirmed Charney's resignation. He said, however, that "in view of the circumstances I think any further comment would be inappropriate."  

The investigations threaten to undermine the biggest union reform effort in U.S. government history, a 40-year legal effort that resulted in Carey's stunning 1991 victory in federally supervised elections.  

A Teamsters spokeswoman yesterday would not comment on the investigations except to repeat an earlier statement by Carey that matters were being investigated by the appropriate authorities and the union was cooperating with those authorities.  

The Teamsters are operating under federal court supervision as the result of a 1989 consent decree the union signed with the Justice Department. The decree settled a civil racketeering suit in which the government accused the Teamsters of being a wholly owned subsidiary of organized crime.  

Carey ran as a reform candidate against the union's old guard leadership five years ago and has since won praise from both the government and others outside the Teamsters for helping clean up the union. Three of the six Teamster presidents who served before Carey's 1991 election were jailed for corruption, and a fourth died while under indictment.  

Carey, members of his election slate and several officials of his reelection campaign have been accused by the Hoffa campaign of receiving illegal employer contributions to help pay for a critical mass mailing last November, just before ballots were mailed to the union membership.  

The Hoffa campaign points to a $95,000 contribution to the Carey campaign by Barbara Arnold. Arnold is the wife of Michael Ansara, owner of the Share Group, a Boston telemarketing company that worked both for the Carey campaign and the Teamsters' political operation in last year's federal elections.  

In late October, Arnold gave the Carey campaign a $45,000 contribution. The contribution was made just a few days after the Teamsters made a $48,687 payment to the Share Group. In late November, Arnold made a $50,000 donation to the Carey campaign just days after the Teamsters paid the company more than $48,000.  

Federal law prohibits unions from accepting money from employers in an election campaign, to prevent employers from trying to influence the union leadership.  

In its complaint to Quindel, the Hoffa campaign noted that under the election rules, contributions from the spouse of an employer "will be deemed contributions received from such employer or employer representative." The Hoffa campaign said the Arnold contributions were particularly important because they came so late in the campaign.  

Arnold's lawyer, William Cudinha of Boston, referred all inquiries yesterday to publicist Larry Rosky, who also serves as a spokesman for the Share Group.  

Rosky said yesterday he could not comment on any aspects of the investigations, but he did say, "We're fully confident that when facts come in, all [of Arnold's and Share's] actions will be seen as totally within bounds." Rosky said Share has had a long relationship with the Teamsters and a variety of unions and progressive causes and was the nation's only unionized telemarketing firm. He said the firm also did work for Carey during his first campaign.  

Sources close to the Teamsters said that one of the problems in trying to connect the Teamsters' payments to the timing of Arnold's contributions to Carey was that the Teamsters also were making payments to the company for work in the general elections.  

Hoffa's supporters are having none of that. Tom Pazzi, Hoffa's campaign manager, calls it a simple "misuse of union funds." Other Hoffa campaign officials claim the return of $200,000 in contributions, including Arnold's money, was an admission the payments were illegal.  

@CAPTION: A federal grand jury is investigating campaign contributions to Teamsters President Ron Carey.  

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