By SELWYN RAAB

In a raid on his office by national union officials and private guards, the head of the carpenters' union in the New York City area was abruptly dismissed yesterday from his $360,000-a-year job on charges of corruption and favoritism to mobsters.

The union leader, Frederick W. Devine, who in the last five years had withstood a battery of investigations by Federal officials and complaints of nepotism and lavish living by challengers, was dismissed along with his four top aides by the national union's new general president, Douglas J. McCarron.

As president of the 26,000-member union since 1991, Mr. Devine, 58, was one of the region's most powerful trade union leaders. His decisions in labor negotiations affected commercial and residential construction costs, and his endorsement and financial support was solicited by political candidates for local and national office.

Taking the unusual step of removing Mr. Devine without a hearing, Mr. McCarron said he had acted after reviewing testimony by cooperating prosecution witnesses in Federal criminal and civil cases that Mr. Devine had been linked to Mafia figures in the Colombo and Genovese crime families.

Mr. McCarron also rebuked Mr. Devine for sanctioning the hiring of mobsters for lucrative trade show jobs at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and in other sites at the expense of ordinary union members.

On Tuesday night, a group of national union officials accompanied by more than a dozen private guards took control of the headquarters of the region's union, the District Council of New York City and Vicinity of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, at 395 Hudson Street in lower Manhattan.

Mr. Devine was not in his plush-carpeted, wood-paneled office overlooking the Hudson River when the takeover occurred, and his secretary said yesterday that he was out of town on business and could not be reached immediately.

Douglas J. Banes, the first vice president of the national union, who was appointed by Mr. McCarron as the temporary supervisor of the district council, said Mr. Devine had been dropped from the payroll and all the office locks had been changed.

"The district council has been out of line for many, many years," Mr. Banes said in an interview. "We intend to clean this up once and for all for the benefit of thousands of rank and file members."

Mr. McCarron, who was elected in November as the general president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, said in a statement that he had the authority to remove Mr. Devine and his aides for actions "detrimental to the welfare and interests of the membership."

Mr. McCarron cited Mr. Devine's support of Anthony Fiorino to handle job assignments for union members at the Javits Center even after he learned that Mr. Fiorino was the brother-in-law of Liborio Bellomo, reputedly the acting boss of the Genovese crime family. Last year, after state officials at the center ousted all suspected mobsters, Mr. McCarron said Mr. Devine had continued a corrupt job referral system for the mob at trade shows in hotels that generated about $1 million a year in wages.

Mr. McCarron said that Federal prosecutors and Kenneth Conboy, a former Federal judge investigating abuses in the district council, supplied evidence that Mr. Devine had accepted payments from two contractors and that he had been influenced by Thomas Petrizzo, whom prosecutors have identified as a captain in the Colombo crime family.

Mr. McCarron also said Mr. Devine had mismanaged the district council's funds, hired unnecessary employees to administer the council, leased luxury cars, run up excessive legal bills, fired dissidents from union jobs and used union money for his re-election campaign last year.

Last year, Mr. Devine secretly raised his annual salary to $360,791, making him one of the nation's five highest paid union officials. About 40 percent of the district's members were unemployed.

Under Mr. Devine's stewardship, the union spent $100 million for its headquarters building, which includes a tree-lined atrium next to his office.

Also dismissed were William Reardon, first vice president; William Hanley, second vice president; Robert J. Cavanaugh, secretary-treasurer, and Raymond O'Kane, trustees chairman.

Photo: Frederick W. Devine, the carpenters' union leader, who wasdismissed from his job yesterday.

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