From the Plain Dealer article today on the money laundering scandal. More on this below.
Details unfold in diocesan cash probe
Zgoznik, 36, had worked under Smith in the diocesan finance office until 1999. The friends each owned vacation condominiums in Zephyrhills, Fla., and continued to share the wealth of their businesses after Zgoznik left diocesan employ in 1999. But Zgoznik continued to handle diocesan accounting work as a consultant, teaming up with Zrino Jukic, president of ZJ & Associates Inc. of Mentor.
Records show the diocese was by far its biggest customer.
In 2000, for instance, ZJ received more than $1.2 million – almost all of it from the diocese, related departments and parishes, according to monthly bank-deposit statements.
The same year, Zgoznik and Jukic wrote more than $193,000 in checks to Smith’s companies.
ZJ also wrote nearly $85,000 in checks that year to Thomas J. Kelley, then chief operating officer of the diocesan-affiliated Catholic Cemeteries Association, for unspecified services. In the past six years, records show, ZJ and a successor firm paid Kelley and his management company more than $331,000. In 2000 alone, the association paid ZJ $135,000 for accounting services.
Kelley, who has retired, could not be reached for comment.
This is REALLY going to get these guys in a lot of hot water with the folks at Holy Cross Cemetery. Our cemetery is definitely a “no frills” kind of cemetery. Like many places they have gone to the makers that are flush with the round, no more upright markers. The grass is mowed and trash is kept to a minimum. They’re a little nutty about the kinds and amount of decorations you can have on a grave site, types of stones (granite no bronze) etc. but as someone who has a baby buried there, I could see that the workers were working hard and so I wasn’t going to quibble.
That said, I did have some concerns. Some of the older stones are NOT being maintained. If an angel has a chip on the wing, nothing gets fixed on it. Old stones topple over and I don’t see that they are really corrected. I heard a while ago that a family finally got enough money together to buy a monument for a child that had been buried there some 50 years or so ago, and the office couldn’t tell them for sure where she was!! There’s also a mausoleum that gives off a rather nauseating odor. My husband says it seems like it isn’t being vented properly.
Last year the cemetery gave out free calendars but not this year. I figured they just couldn’t afford it.
But my biggest gripe was the condition of some of the older graves in baby land, those closest to the road from the 1970s and 80s. When it snows, they are covered by the snow plow, when it rains the stones are under at least 3-4 inches of rain water. And then of course there are the lovely droppings by the geese that perpetually roam around the place reminding me of the manure yard we had behind our barn when I grew up on a dairy farm. These stones are a substantial investment. The simplest ones start around $300 to $400. Many of the graves there aren’t even marked (it’s hard for a young family to come up with that kind of money when a tragedly like that happens, especially with medical bills and other expenses on top of it.) Yet last year, I noted two new stones that went in over at that section. One seemed quite expensive with a Precious Moments Angel carved in and what looked like gold lettering inside the carved name, date and inscription. How pleased that family will feel to see the stone they waited some 30 years to buy and put into place covered over by 3 inches of water and floating goose piles!! This isn’t the type of “perpetual maintenance” most folks have in mind I’m sure. I wonder how much of that could be corrected with that $85,000? It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.