St. John’s Right to Task Force Funds Argued : Hearing: Aiming to avoid an embezzlement trial, a lawyer for the former Bradley associate tries to show her spending was proper.

A lawyer for Juanita St. John, the onetime business associate of Mayor Tom Bradley charged with bilking a city-funded African trade program, said Tuesday that his client was legally permitted to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer subsidies as she saw fit.

“It was informal. It was just, ‘Here’s the money, go spend it,’ ” attorney Victor Sherman said of the controversial Task Force for Africa/Los Angeles Relations, a Bradley pet program that received $400,000 in city funds between 1985 and 1989.

Sherman’s remarks came as St. John’s much-postponed Municipal Court preliminary hearing resumed with a concerted defense effort to derail the felony embezzlement case before a trial.

St. John is charged with five counts of grand theft and filing false state tax returns. The charges include the allegation that she stole $178,000 from the task force. St. John, who has a history of personal financial problems, has insisted she is innocent and that the case is politically driven because of her ties to the mayor.

Those ties, which figured prominently in the recent City Hall ethics controversy, include her partnership with the mayor until recently in a Riverside real estate investment. In addition, Bradley’s daughter was hired by St. John at the task force, and Bradley hired St. John’s daughter in the mayor’s office.

Bradley personally attended many task force meetings, but has denied being aware of any financial problems.

St. John’s emerging defense has been that she alone had discretion over the financial affairs of the nonprofit task force. Among other things, St. John says she was entitled to much of the money she allegedly stole because she believed she was to be paid a salary of about $75,000 per year--nearly twice the pay prosecutors say was legally authorized.

Investigators contend St. John wrote checks for cash or to herself--some as large as $21,000--and used the money for house payments, credit card installments and other personal expenses.

On Tuesday, an accountant hired by St. John’s attorney took the stand with three large volumes of summaries, receipts and canceled checks to argue St. John not only spent the money properly, but is owed $6,000 by the task force.

Of the $178,000 allegedly embezzled, accountant Lionel Sanders said $110,000 was spent to augment her salary, nearly $30,000 was repayment of money St. John loaned the task force and about $18,000 was reimbursement for expenses and travel. Another $9,500 was simply a transfer between task force accounts and the remainder was miscellaneous reimbursements, Sanders said.

Under Sherman’s questioning, Sanders also said St. John had paid taxes on the extra salary--testimony intended to show she was not hiding what she took.

But under cross-examination by Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Licker, Sanders admitted he lacked the documentation needed to do an audit. For example, he sometimes relied solely on handwritten notations on task force checks St. John wrote indicating they were for “travel” or “reimbursement for advances,” Sanders said.

Sanders said he found no formal authorization for the extra salary St. John claimed. He also said he knew of no loan agreement requiring the task force to repay St. John and her husband for checks they wrote the task force when it was struggling in the early 1980s.