St. John Claims Allegedly Stolen Cash Was Her Salary

Most of the money Juanita St. John allegedly stole from a city-funded Los Angeles-Africa trade task force was actually part of a $75,000 annual salary she drew out of the nonprofit agency, her lawyer contended Thursday.

Attorney Victor Sherman said $110,000 of the $178,000 St. John is accused of taking from the task force was salary due her as executive director. The rest was spent on travel and other task force business, he said.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Licker said investigators have found nothing authorizing St. John to be paid more than about $40,000 per year. Licker said that St. John illegally drained task force accounts to pay loans and mortgages on her San Marino home.

The salary dispute erupted at the beginning of a much-delayed Superior Court preliminary hearing to determine whether St. John will stand trial on five counts of felony grand theft and filing false state tax returns. St. John has denied any wrongdoing.

The case is the most serious of a series of legal battles for St. John, 58, a friend and former business partner of Mayor Tom Bradley. She headed Bradley’s scandal-plagued Task Force for Africa/Los Angeles Relations.

St. John was acquitted in April on charges of failing to honor a city subpoena, but the city attorney has sued St. John to recover nearly $400,000 that his office contends was misspent.

Sherman offered no evidence at Thursday’s hearing before Judge David Doi that a $75,000 annual salary was approved by anyone other than St. John. Most of those who served on Bradley’s advisory board for the task force have maintained that they knew nothing of St. John’s salary or the group’s finances.

Sherman said he may call Bradley, who helped create the task force and pushed city funding to keep it alive, as a witness, presumably to back St. John’s salary claims.

Bradley is the only person associated with the task force who has indicated that St. John’s salary may have been as high as Sherman contends.

In an interview under oath last year, Bradley told city auditors he recalled discussions that the executive director be paid $60,000 to $75,000, although he said he did not know St. John’s salary.

Bradley spokesman Bill Chandler said the mayor would not comment on St. John’s salary or whether he had been subpoenaed. “The mayor will fully cooperate in all requests for information in the court proceedings,” he said.

Among those testifying Thursday was UCLA Vice Chancellor Elwin Svenson, who helped negotiate a 1985 agreement for the university to provide payroll services and office space for the task force. Svenson said the mayor and St. John agreed to keep St. John’s salary in the same range it had been when she was an employee of the university--about $40,000 per year.

“It was clearly agreed what her salary would be,” he said.

Whatever the outcome of the courtroom debate over the salary, a leading City Hall critic of the task force reacted angrily to the notion that St. John might have collected a $75,000 annual salary.

“We don’t pay a police sergeant $75,000, and clearly we get more from him than we did from her,” said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky. “It was a boondoggle. It was a fraud.”

Several task force advisory board members testified Thursday that St. John was given a free hand in running the group’s financial affairs, and was thought to be doing a good job.

Sherman also noted that St. John was allowed to set her own salary. “Is a $65,000 to $70,000 salary out of line?” he asked. “So you have a difference of opinion.”