Bradley Tried to ‘Interfere’ With Audit, Tuttle Charges : Controversial Aide Owes City $260,000: Controller

Mayor Tom Bradley, through a top aide, tried to “interfere” with an audit that eventually found that Juanita St. John, head of a controversial African trade promotion task force, owes the city more than $260,000, Controller Rick Tuttle charged today.

Tuttle asked the district attorney and city attorney to determine whether criminal charges should be filed against St. John, a business associate of Bradley and executive director of the task force. The Los Angeles Police Department is already investigating St. John’s handling of city funds, including the alleged commingling of public and her private money.

During a news conference, Tuttle termed the actions of Bradley and his staff “extremely inappropriate” and “unprecedented.”

The mayor could not be reached immediately for comment.

The audit determined that St. John owes the city more than $260,000, including $36,000 in interest, in public funds provided the task force during the past four years. Tuttle said repeated efforts to get St. John to account for $178,000 of the total have been unsuccessful. The task force received nearly $400,000 in city funds from 1985 until this year.

Bradley, in an interview conducted under oath as part of the audit, denied trying to interfere with the audit or doing anything else improper.

Issue Involving Daughter

But the mayor acknowledged authorizing his staff to talk to Tuttle about two issues. One of those involved Bradley’s daughter, Phyllis, who worked for the task force at one time but was fired for undisclosed reasons.

The mayor said he was trying to protect the city from “liability” when he allowed an aide, Anton Calleia, to ask for the return of a termination letter concerning Bradley’s daughter which St. John had given to auditors.

Bradley said possible release of the letter would have violated privacy laws.

“Never was there any intention of in any way influencing or thwarting your audit,” Bradley told Tuttle, according to the interview transcript.

Bradley specifically denied a Tuttle allegation that Calleia had asked the controller’s office to stop asking for Internal Revenue Service records involving St. John.

IRS Denies Receiving Records

“I don’t recall a conversation about IRS,” Bradley said.

Calleia said, according to a transcript of his audit interview, “I don’t recall saying anything about IRS records.”

He could not be reached for comment this morning.

According to audit documents, St. John gave auditors records intended to show the amounts of income she reported to the IRS. But, the audit report said, IRS officials denied ever receiving those records.

IRS spokeswoman Carole Shapiro said the department could not disclose whether St. John also faces tax questions stemming from her handling of funds for the Task Force for Africa/Los Angeles Relations.

‘Normal Practice’

Bradley said Calleia had his approval to urge auditors to approve at least one set of hotel bills for St. John and her husband. Bradley said “normal (city) practice” permits spouses to travel with city employees to conferences and conventions and “simply charge the hotel (bill) to the city, even if their spouses stayed with them.”

“I thought that this was a sudden departure” from policy that could affect thousands of city workers, Bradley said.

But Tuttle told the news conference that “I regard it as an attempt to interfere with the audit process. I also regard it as something which is unprecedented.”

St. John’s attorney, Richard Hirsch, said it “doesn’t surprise me that there is some investigation which is under way.”

“It’s my belief that when the dust settles in this matter she’ll be vindicated and all of the funds will be accounted for,” Hirsch said. He declined to discuss specifics of the audit because he has not seen a copy.

Already Facing Charges

St. John already faces misdemeanor criminal charges for failing to respond to a city subpoena for records to account for the missing money.

The audit listed dozens of checks that St. John wrote to herself or to “cash” between July, 1985, and June of this year while she was executive director of the task force and virtually in sole control of its operations.

Among the larger unexplained items was $78,923 in August, 1987, and a mysterious $50,000 bank certificate of deposit which St. John claimed existed but neither auditors nor the bank that reportedly issued it ever could find.

Tuttle accused St. John of making “inconsistent statements” and thwarting the efforts of city auditors to account for the money. For example, Tuttle said, St. John said on one occasion that relevant financial records were at her home. When she failed to produce them, she then said the records had been stolen in an earlier burglary of the task force offices at UCLA. No such break-in ever was reported to campus police.

Bradley has been under investigation by the city attorney’s office since April for possible conflicts of interest involving his business dealing with associates, including St. John. The two are partners in a Riverside County real estate investment.

Times staff writer Glenn F. Bunting contributed to this story.