Citron Painted as Failure in Court Papers

Former Orange County Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron’s attorney portrays his client in court papers filed Monday as an abject failure who flunked out of college, flopped in the business world and didn’t find success until he ended up as a deputy tax collector.

Citron “is not a mental giant or financial wizard,” defense attorney David Wiechert argued in documents filed in preparation for a pre-sentencing hearing in Orange County Superior Court today. “Instead, he was born with limited intellectual capabilities that began deteriorating before the county’s financial crisis.”

Two weeks ago, Citron’s attorney told the court that his client had begun suffering from “dementia” four years before his wrong-way bets on the direction of interest rates caused $1.7 billion in losses to the investment pool Citron managed for the county and approximately 200 other government agencies that entrusted Citron with their funds.

Monday’s filings are the latest effort by Citron’s attorneys to persuade Superior Court Judge David O. Carter that Citron deserves probation rather than a prison term. To this end, they have introduced mitigating factors favorable to Citron, and have sought to gain access to evidence gathered by prosecutors that others were as much or more to blame for the county’s investment losses and its resulting bankruptcy.

Part of Citron’s apparent strategy is to explode the myth that the 70-year-old former treasurer actually possessed the extraordinary investment acumen he once boasted of in annual reports to the county’s Board of Supervisors, and to show that he was anything but the “wise and savvy investor” presented to voters who reelected him in 1994 as the investment pool he ran began suffering reverses.

A devoted booster of the University of Southern California, Citron attended the school “during World War II, having been physically unfit for military service,” according to the court filing.

“At a time when most of the college-eligible men were fighting overseas, Mr. Citron’s college performance was dismal. After approximately five years of 100 level courses, a number of which he failed, Mr. Citron left college to earn a living.

“In the private sector, [Citron’s] employment accomplishments matched his college performance,” Wiechert wrote, noting that Citron had a spotty career with consumer finance companies “either due to a lack of personal success, or the failure of the office in which he worked.”

In 1960, at the suggestion of a friend, Citron become a deputy county tax collector, a job he held for 10 years. “His position did not require any economic sophistication,” Wiechert wrote.

Then, in 1970, after the tax collector resigned, Citron sought the job and was elected. Three years later, the Board of Supervisors consolidated the treasurer’s and tax collector’s functions.

“Citron, who had never owned a share of stock, inherited the investments of the county,” Wiechert noted, suggesting in the court papers that with the help of experienced underlings, Citron managed to create the appearance that he was competent to invest vast sums of public money.

In reality, Wiechert contends, Citron’s reputation developed solely because of his able assistants, his close relationship with Merrill Lynch & Co., and--from the early 1980s until November of 1993--the “unprecedented steady decline in interest rates that rendered it almost impossible for a public treasurer in California not to post respectable gains.”

But by early 1993, Citron “was feeling the effects of his psychological maladies and had begun to withdraw from public view.” On April 1, 1993, Matthew R. Raabe was named assistant treasurer.

Citron has blamed Raabe for skimming interest due other pool participants into a reserve account and later transferring it to the county’s general fund, but he contends that others in the county had to know what was going on.

“Undoubtedly, the idea of diverting interest to the county was either known by, or perhaps even had its origins with, county officials outside the treasurer’s office,” according to the court papers.

In May, Raabe was charged with the same six felony charges to which Citron has pleaded guilty; his trial is pending.

Citron also claimed he told Merrill Lynch salesman Michael G. Stamenson about the illegal interest diversions. In fact, he “discussed every significant facet of the pool with the broker.”

Merrill Lynch has repeatedly denied that it guided Citron into making risky investments, or that it improperly influenced Citron in any way.

In the 16-page court filing, Citron claims that when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission started an “informal” investigation in April, 1994, former county counsel Terry Andrus hired the law firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae to accompany Raabe and Citron to their meetings with the SEC, and then devised a way to conceal that from the public.

“County counsel suggested that LeBoeuf Lamb’s fees . . . not be publicly disclosed,” Wiechert wrote, adding that “in an accommodation between county counsel and LeBoeuf, Lamb, [the firm’s] fees were included in their bond counsel fees on a later debt offering.”

Now in private practice in the city of Orange, Andrus said, “I don’t like to get into matters that are before the court, but those statements are categorically false.”

Citron “wanted to know whether [he] had authority under the existing contract with LeBoeuf, Lamb to retain them for these additional services,” Andrus said. “Our office looked at it and said the treasurer did have authority to retain them as counsel.”

But Andrus said he never suggested the fees not be disclosed, or hidden away in a bond deal. “I’m really not aware of how they were paid,” he said.

Citron faces up to 14 years in prison and $10 million in fines after pleading guilty in April. Judge Carter has grown impatient over repeated delays in sentencing, and last month set a sentencing date in December.

In an effort to influence the judge’s eventual sentence, Citron has requested--and the district attorney’s office has denied--access to literally millions of pieces of evidence gathered in the course of the district attorney’s nearly yearlong investigation.

Prosecutors have offered to turn over some of the evidence gathered on Raabe, subject to a court order preventing its public release.

But as for the other evidence sought by Citron, the D.A. said its release would damage the continuing investigation.

“Disclosure of the requested information at this time would jeopardize a pending criminal investigation and may compromise Grand Jury secrecy,” Assistant Dist. Atty. Wallace J. Wade responded to Wiechert in a letter.

“As you know, the Grand Jury will conclude its term in December,” Wade wrote. “By Dec. 15, 1995, we expect the Grand Jury to have completed the current phase of the investigation.”