Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Sounds like this guy made a habit of buying power…

“..because this is the way our friend Tony wants us to vote.”

A doctor who sat on a state hospital board said Thursday he was “disgusted and humiliated” at being pressured to approve a major hospital project.

Dr. Imad Almanaseer, head of pathology at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, testified at Tony Rezko’s corruption trial that he was instructed by then-Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board chairman Thomas Beck on April 21, 2004, to vote for a proposed $81 million hospital in Crystal Lake “because this is the way our friend Tony wants us to vote.”

Rezko, 52, is accused of scheming with then-hospital planning board member Stuart Levine to approve that deal and split a kickback from a builder. Levine has pleaded guilty and will testify against Rezko.

Almanaseer, testifying under immunity from prosecution, said he was surprised because the hospital, proposed by Mercy Health Systems, had been shot down in late 2003. Almanaseer at first passed, leaving the project one vote shy of approval. He told jurors Levine walked over to talk with Beck, then went to Almanaseer and whispered: “He wants you to vote.”

“I was, you know, disgusted and humiliated by the whole thing,” Almanaseer said, but agreed, he said, so Levine would return to his seat.

Almanaseer testified that, in 2000, he lent Rezko $500,000 to invest in Rezko’s Papa John’s Pizza and Panda Express franchises. Almanaseer said he later tried unsuccessfully to get his money back from Rezko. He said that, in 2005 — long after a federal probe into the board became public — Rezko gave him $800,000.

When he was appointed to the board in 2003 with Rezko’s help, Almanaseer testified, Beck handed out index cards with voting instructions, indicating they were from Rezko, and told him if he ever had trouble deciding how to vote, he should watch how Levine votes “because that’s how Tony would want it.”

Later, when Almanaseer mentioned that to Rezko: “He laughed about it and changed the subject,” Almanaseer said under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Reid Schar.

But Almanaseer told defense lawyer Joseph Duffy that Rezko never directly told him how to vote.

Also testifying Thursday was former Metra board chairman Jeff Ladd, a lawyer who, at the time of the Mercy deal, represented competing proposals. Ladd said Beck told him the night before the Mercy vote that it would be approved. “I was stunned,” Ladd said.

Also Thursday, Duffy confirmed that then-Gov. Jim Edgar tried to appoint Rezko to the health board in 1998. But the Senate rejected his and other appointments so those posts could be filled by incoming Gov. George Ryan, the Associated Press reported.

(Chicago Sun Times)