DeLorean Trial Starts; Both Sides Square Off

DETROIT — With the tedious task of selecting a jury completed, opening statements were heard on Tuesday in the fraud trial of former auto maker John Z. DeLorean. The prosecutor said DeLorean had been caught with “his hands in the cookie jar,” while the defense attorney said what happened was “legal and legitimate.”

The 61-year-old former General Motors executive is accused of swindling investors in his now-defunct Northern Ireland car company out of nearly $9 million in an elaborate financial scheme involving, among other things, Swiss banks and obscure Panamanian and Liberian corporations.

Joseph Papelian, assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the prosecution, illustrated his statement with charts and maps as he outlined for the seven-woman, five-man jury a series of complicated transactions the government alleges that DeLorean used to embezzle the money from his 140 limited partners.

“We have pieced together the puzzle that DeLorean used to steal that money,” he said. “This was no dream. This was a nightmare. DeLorean had his hands in the cookie jar--the partners’ cookie jar.”

DeLorean’s attorney, Howard Weitzman, left Papelian’s charts in place as he delivered his opening statement for the defense. Referring to the charts, he said, “they are interesting, and besides being entertaining, they are true.”

Weitzman contended that the transactions detailed in the charts were accurate, legitimate and commonplace. “The evidence will show that money passed,” Weitzman said, but that the transactions were “legal and legitimate. No witness will ever say that John DeLorean stole the money.”