Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [143]
They met in a parking lot, which is rarely a good sign.
“The fucking assholes,” Anton snarls to Zrino. “See, this is what happens when nobody communicates. Okay, Joe’s trying to claim it’s a consulting fee from us.” Anton confides that lawyer Steve Sozio, for the diocese, has asked him why he paid Joe Smith all that money. “Obviously, you and I would never give a kickback,” Anton says. To which Zrino says, “No.”
“It was executive compensation,” continues Anton Zgoznik. “Cause that’s exactly what we have to say.”
“Right.”
“Father Wright is behind this. You know that as well as I do.”
“He is?” blurts Zrino Jukic.
“They hooked us into their system,” says Zgoznik, of the diocese.
“Right.”
Zgoznik gets down to the point. “But you gotta help me out with Joe and Father and say that they authorized this.”
“They did,” replies Zrino Jukic.
Anton tells Zrino to confect a document to show that.20
Zrino Jukic drove home in the toxic residue of a Christmas dirty trick and put the tape in his dresser drawer where it slept for several months until he met with the federal prosecutor, John Siegel. As Anton Zgoznik’s business crashed, Jukic hoped his tape would keep him from being indicted.
Judge Aldrich ruled that the recording was hearsay damaging to Smith, who was not present. Thus, separate trials for Zgoznik and Smith.
Anton Zgoznik’s trial began the last week of August 2007.
Joe Smith sat in the audience, taking copious notes each day.
Zrino Jukic, as the prosecution lead witness, testified that while in Zgoznik’s employ, Anton “told me that Joe was asking for a percentage of the business that the company was getting from the Diocese … ten percent.” Jukic claimed to have no “control over the situation. So I can’t say I challenged him.” Pressed by prosecutor Siegel as to whether it “would be legal for you” to help facilitate such payments, he said, “No.”
Siegel rejoined: “Did you agree to go ahead and do it anyway?”
“I did.”
As he gave more answers, Zrino Jukic showed himself still hurting from the jilt.
I started to realize that I was not an owner in the company … I was being reviewed and treated like an employee just like everyone else. My salary was determined by Anton. I didn’t come in and say, “These are my clients and [I] brought in so much as revenues; as a partner, that’s mine.” No, that was not the story.
Jukic several times mentioned “kickbacks” to Joe Smith, finally eliciting an objection from defense attorney Robert Rotatori over a term yet unproven. Rotatori jabbed at Jukic for his failure to file personal income taxes “in 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000”—he had finally filed them, several years later. A detached observer might see why Zgoznik subjected him to a job review, and wonder how a guy who failed to file his tax returns qualified as a financial adviser. Rotatori in trying to attack his credibility sought to portray Zrino Jukic as a snitch.
ROTATORI: What’s your expectation as you sit here today about your being prosecuted with regard to your personal tax returns that you described in your testimony?
JUKIC: I have no expectations.
You don’t believe you will be prosecuted?
I don’t control that. I have been asked to cooperate as a witness, and that’s what I’ve done … Nothing was promised to me.
In contrast to the corpulent Jukic who double-crossed his friend, the slender Father Wright in his Roman collar was a bland personality. He wore glasses; his silver-gray hair was carefully parted. He had entered seminary after law school and a broken romance. By virtue of his background and education, Pilla had made him secretary for legal and financial affairs. The job ran nineteen years. Cemeteries was less demanding than the chancery post: more time to be a pastor, more time to be with friends. From lawyers’ huddles came the agreement not to grill Wright about “the girlfriend,” since he was not