CHICAGO - Political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko got a former state official to deliver "black plastic bags" of cash through "narrow streets" to pay contractors threatening to slap an embarrassing lien on the governor's home, prosecutors told a federal judge Tuesday.
Rezko's attorney immediately dubbed the story a fantasy as the two sides bickered over the last scraps of prosecution testimony before the government rests its case at Rezko's political fraud trial.
Ali Ata, the former executive director of the Illinois Finance Authority who pleaded guilty to tax and other charges last week, is expected to take the witness stand when the trial resumes on Thursday.
Prosecutors plan to lead him through an account of how he dug $125,000 out of a safe and delivered it to Rezko.
Ata will testify he accompanied Rezko when he delivered $50,000 of the money to the head of Gov. Rod Blagojevich's campaign fund, suburban roofing contractor Christopher Kelly, Judge Amy J. St. Eve was told.
Prosecutors say Ata will testify he gave Rezko $25,000 to prevent a lien on the governor's Chicago home, which Rezko allegedly said would prove embarrassing to Blagojevich.
The governor is not charged with wrongdoing. His spokeswoman said Blagojevich and his wife paid for renovation work on the house themselves.
"We can't comment on alleged conversations that the governor was not a party to," Abby Ottenhoff said in a statement. "But as we said last year, the Blagojeviches personally paid for the work to renovate their ... family room out of their checking account."
Rezko's chief defense counsel, Joseph J. Duffy, asked St. Eve to bar prosecutors from asking Ata about the cash. The story had nothing to do with the charges against Rezko and was therefore irrelevant, he said.
But St. Eve said such testimony was relevant because it showed the relations between Ata, Rezko and Kelly.
She did bar the prosecutors, however, from bringing in such atmospheric embellishments as "black plastic bags" and "narrow streets."
Rezko, 52, is charged with scheming to split a $1.5 million bribe from a contractor who wanted state permission to build a hospital in the McHenry County suburb of Crystal Lake. He also is charged with scheming to pressure kickbacks out of money management firms that wanted allocations of money to invest from the $40 billion state teachers pension fund.
Prosecutors say Rezko's fundraising for Blagojevich's campaign gave him the clout to manipulate the state boards that operate the pension fund and decide which new hospitals may be built in Illinois.
Rezko denies he had anything to do with such schemes.
Ata could take the stand as early as Thursday and the government is tentatively planning to rest its case Monday or Tuesday.
http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2008/04/29/ap-state-il/d90bqqp01.txt
2 comments:
A lot of politicians are worried about this trial. In Chicago/Illinois they all run in the same pack.
Bags of money and pay offs this would make the Mafia proud. TGCN your right this trial is bringing alot of names out and others will have some explaining to do. Some will act shocked while others will pray their not exposed. Now Rezko was smart enough to know Fitz should be fired. To bad the White House was busy with other crimes at the time. Dennis might lose some weight with his name coming out as to his actions. One would say dissociation of a criminal is the thing to do now, just act like it wasn't all that. People will believe what they're told if the person is a good liar. Now for anyone to think Rezko only had a few elected officials in his back pocket is to believe the Brooklyn Bridge is for sale. Hoover had names on his list that most people never dreamed of as when he died the truth came out. Hoover was part of the JFK assassination but that wasn't released until most of the people from that era had died. I look forward to the Media saying it was Bill Clinton's fault it's just to easy these days and it works every time.
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