Parallel views of Antoin “Tony” Rezko were on full display at his corruption trial Thursday, with prosecutors casting him as the ultimate fixer and Rezko’s lawyers portraying him as the victim of a strung-out but clever con man.
Rezko is accused of misusing his clout with his friend, Gov. Rod Blagojevich, in an attempt to extort millions of dollars through state boards he controlled, including a panel that had life-or-death power over hospital projects.
Under questioning from prosecutors, two former members of the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board said that Rezko controlled their votes by conveying his wishes through secret phone calls and messages passed through intermediaries on the panel. But when pressed by Rezko’s lawyers, the two acknowledged that Rezko had never specifically commanded them to do anything.
Rather, the witnesses said, another board member portrayed himself as the conduit for telegraphing Rezko’s wishes and they complied. That member was Stuart Levine, who has pleaded guilty in the case and will testify against Rezko, possibly as early as next week. Rezko’s lawyers say Levine is a manipulative name-dropper with a serious drug problem.
“Mr. Rezko never asked you to vote one way or the other?” defense lawyer William Ziegelmueller asked Imad Almanaseer, one of the former members of the hospital panel.
“That’s true,” replied Almanaseer.
Prosecutors sought to counter any doubt about Rezko’s might with testimony from Jeff Ladd, a veteran lobbyist hired by several hospital groups to promote their interests before the board. Ladd said that his clients paid $80,000 to a Rezko friend to keep Rezko from turning the board against them.
By the time Blagojevich came to power in 2003, lobbying the hospital board had grown into a fertile business. Many politically connected heavyweights had latched onto clients seeking permits for new facilities or, in some cases, seeking to block competitors from getting their projects approved.
There was Ladd, the former Metra chairman and Republican candidate for attorney general. But the field was also saturated with lobbyists from Blagojevich’s orbit.
David Wilhelm, the former Democratic National Committee chairman and a top adviser to the new governor, snagged a client. So did David Stricklin and John Wyma, aides to Blagojevich when he served in Congress, and Milan Petrovic, another friend and fundraiser of the governor.
Ladd’s hospitals were often at odds with the hospitals that had hired Blagojevich-linked lobbyists. What’s more, several administration cabinet officials had endorsed a plan to build a new Mercy Hospital in Crystal Lake. A competing hospital group in McHenry County hired Ladd to try to stop Mercy.
Fearing political muscle was stacked against him, Ladd said he set out to pinpoint who really called the shots at the newly overhauled hospital panel under Blagojevich. He dined with Levine and later Thomas Beck and was told that Rezko was behind the appointments of five members — a majority of the board.
As a result, Ladd invited Rezko to a breakfast at the Union League Club in October 2003. Ladd’s purpose was to gauge reaction from Rezko to the agendas of his clients.
“He listened courteously and didn’t say a thing,” Ladd testified.
That silence scared Ladd, who figured he needed to find someone who already had Rezko’s ear. The assignment would be to keep Rezko from meddling in board decisions in ways that would hurt Ladd’s hospitals.
Through Beck, Ladd learned that Rezko was close with former Chicago Park District chief Ed Kelly and that Kelly was looking for consulting work. Ladd’s hospitals hired Kelly to keep Rezko at bay, paying him $80,000 over a period of many months.
The strategy, Ladd said, wasn’t a complete success.
He was “stunned” to hear from Beck the night before the Mercy vote in April 2004 that the proposal was going to pass. Ladd told the jury he immediately reached out for Kelly, who wasn’t able to contact Rezko by phone until the vote was nearly under way. That was too late.
The Mercy plan passed, but it was apparently Ladd’s and Kelly’s turn the next time around.
U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve, who is presiding over the trial, barred Ladd from relating precisely what Kelly had told him about his 11th-hour chat with Rezko. But prosecutors worked around St. Eve’s impasse. Under their probing, Ladd acknowledged that a few months later the board approved a new Bolingbrook hospital sought by one of his clients.
Prosecutors claim Rezko stocked the board with a compliant majority, running it through Levine and Beck, who was on the witness stand for a second day.
Beck, the board chairman, told prosecutors he often spoke to Rezko before board meetings about projects of interest to Rezko. Then, Beck said, he passed the word to Levine, the board’s vice chairman, and three doctors who formed the rest of the Rezko bloc on the board. But under cross-examination, Beck acknowledged Rezko never personally made demands of him. He said it was Levine who called him three times the night before the Mercy vote to push for its quick approval.
Almanaseer, top pathologist at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, said he had qualms about backing Mercy but he did so because Beck told him to just before to the vote.
“He said, ‘That’s how Tony wants it,'” said Almanaseer, a onetime investor in Rezko’s fast-food franchises.
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IN THE WEB EDITION
Tribune reporters file regular updates from the Rezko trial at chicagotribune.com/rezkotrial
