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 Under questioning by attorneys for Antoin "Tony" Rezko, Stuart P. Levine said his net worth plunged from $79 million in 1999 to negative numbers six years later as his pharmaceutical shares tanked and he frantically sold assets to pay monthly credit card bills of as much as $20,000 each for himself and his wife after his bribe money dried up.
"Would you say your spending was out of control?" asked Rezko's chief defense counsel, Joseph J. Duffy, as cross examination got under way.
"Would you explain what you mean by out of control?" Levine answered.
Duffy pounded for hours at the notion that decades of drugs had fried Levine's brain and destroyed his memory. As if to make the point, Levine suffered an embarrassing brain cramp that played right into Duffy's hands.
Duffy got Levine, who has pleaded guilty to scheming with Rezko, to say he remembered sitting in the witness chair earlier in the trial and reading from his plea agreement after it was introduced as an exhibit.
Duffy then pointed to the government's wire exhibit cart parked nearby and asked federal prosecutors to retrieve the plea agreement from it.
"We'll stipulate that there is no such exhibit," federal prosecutor Christopher S. Niewoehner said coolly as if the matter were unimportant.
The hammering Levine took from Duffy, a former federal prosecutor, was designed to offset as much as possible days of detailed testimony against Rezko
-- a real estate developer accused by prosecutors of playing a corrupt, behind-the-scenes role in the heart of state government.
Rezko, 52, is charged with scheming with Levine to squeeze kickbacks out of money management firms seeking to invest assets of the $40 billion state fund that pays the pensions of thousands of retired school teachers.
He also is charged with scheming with Levine to split a $1 million bribe from a contractor who wanted to build a hospital in Crystal Lake.
Levine sat on the two state boards with powers over such matters. But prosecutors say Rezko, who raised huge sums for Gov. Rod Blagojevich's campaign, used the influence he gained to become the power behind boards.
Rezko insists he took part in no such schemes. Blagojevich has not been charged with any crimes.
But Levine has pleaded guilty and taken the stand for the government in hopes of a lenient 5 1/2-year prison sentence.
Among other things, Duffy got Levine to admit that he initially lied to federal prosecutors about a crooked real estate deal, even after he agreed to cooperate with the government to avoid a possible life sentence.
Prosecutors and agents caught him in the lie, Levine testified.
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 He said he had believed "stupidly that I was smarter than the government and could keep Ed Vrdolyak out of trouble." Vrdolyak is a former Chicago alderman now facing charges tied to the real estate deal.
Duffy's cross examination was plainly designed to wreck Levine's credibility and demolish his image with endless humiliating admissions.
He painted Levine as a career crook who has not held a 9-to-5 job since 1976, lived off bribe money and lied to his wife and children while going to marathon drug sessions to snort cocaine, crystal meth,
Ecstasy and other drugs, sometimes with vodka as well.
Levine said he had owned one home worth as much as $6 million in Highland Park and another worth at least $1 million in Florida. He said he and his children drove Porsches and Mercedes-Benz automobiles.
Levine admitted he attended drug sessions at The Purple Hotel for 15 years but said he never did so on Saturday when he was with his family. Duffy immediately produced a credit card bill showing Levine had charged $761 at the hotel on Nov. 2, 2002, which was a Saturday.
Levine said he believed that was merely the "transaction date" and not one of the days when one of the marathon drug sessions had been held.
But Duffy brushed that aside.
"You cannot, sir, say with any certainty that you did not have a room at the hotel on Nov. 2, 2002, can you?" Duffy asked.
"No, sir," Levine said.
Duffy also coaxed out the story of how Levine admitted he swindled the estate of millionaire businessman Ted Tannenbaum, his mother's first cousin who had taken the youthful Levine under his wing and paid him lavishly.
"Did you love Mr. Tannenbaum?" Duffy thundered.
"At one time, yes, sir," Levine said.
"And yet the man who had been so good to you for 20 years -- you stole from his children, didn't you?" Duffy asked.
"Yes, sir," Levine said meekly.
[Associated
Press; By MIKE ROBINSON]
Copyright 2008 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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