Salt Lake Mayor Deedee Corradini received nearly $265,000 out of two companies for travel, loans and personal expenses, plus a $249,000 mortgage, according to partial balance sheets of the companies.
The money went toward vacations and other travel, Corradini's bank charges, personal loans to her and husband Yan Ross and interest payments on the couple's Federal Heights home.Bankruptcy examiner Alan V. Funk has reported that funds diverted to the offshore companies - Sallah International and Lio Cam - should have gone to shareholders of the now-bankrupt Bonneville Pacific Corp.
On July 19, 1990, Corradini sent a handwritten note to Jack T. Dunlop, a Bonneville Pacific officer, asking him to use Sallah funds to pay for a family vacation.
In the note, Corradini said she had estimated the cost of the vacation at $25,000, but the estimate had been "way off."
A review of Sallah accounts shows that on July 27, 1990 - eight days later - the company sent Corradini $40,000 for "travel expenses."
Through her spokesman, Corradini declined Thursday to comment on the expenses or where she went on vacation.
Corradini apparently had an understanding with Sallah that the company's funds would pay for her overseas travel.
"Very simply, Deedee from time to time would travel internationally, and she understood from Jack (Dunlop), I suppose, that she was entitled to travel reimbursements for those trips," said David Tucker, accountant for Sallah.
After the trips "she presented travel bills to me and said these are for Sallah," the accountant said in a sworn deposition with Funk.
Asked if Corradini fulfilled some business purpose for Sallah on those trips, Tucker said he didn't know. "I didn't feel the need to ask," he said.
Funk was able to obtain only a few balance sheets for Sallah and Lio Cam, according to his report.
Corradini and Bonneville Pacific officers John (Jack) Dunlop, Robert Wood, Raymond Hixson and Wynn Johnson used Sallah several ways to make money from Bonneville Pacific and its subsidiaries.
In one transaction, Sallah owners netted $500,000 for offering the use of Sallah's name as a guarantor on a promissory note to Bonneville Pacific, which never collected on the note.
Corradini, Wood, Hixson and Johnson owned Sallah, according to Funk's report. Dunlop maintained an "economic interest" in Sallah.
When Bonneville Pacific directors realized that company officers owned Sallah, they refused to authorize deals with the off-shore company. That's when Bonneville Pacific officers created Lio Cam, according to Funk's report.
Lio Cam began to play the role with Bonneville Pacific that Sallah had played.
Bonneville Pacific officers found themselves in a bind near the close of 1986. The company had shown dramatic profits - in the tens of millions of dollars - in the two years before, according to the company's annual reports. But as 1986 drew to a close, the company had little profit to show.
Anxious to show a profit to shareholders, Bonneville Pacific sold a power project in Dinuba, Calif., to Interwest Hydro, a company partially owned by Bonneville Pacific officers.
Interwest wanted to pay for the company with $1 million in cash and a $9.7 million promissory note, Funk's report says.
However, Interwest was worth only about $2 million. So Bonneville Pacific's accountants required Interwest Hydro to find a third company to guarantee the $9.7 million note.
Enter Sallah.
Sallah agreed to guarantee Interwest's promissory note for a $500,000 fee. Money for that fee came out of Bonneville Pacific's coffers.
It worked this way: Interwest did not have $500,000 to give Sallah. Instead, the company found a power project in Anchorage, Alaska, and sold it to Bonneville Pacific for $500,000.
Bonneville Pacific paid Interwest $500,000, then Interwest promptly paid Sallah $500,000, according to Funk's report. Bonneville Pacific officers were members of all three companies.
Bonneville Pacific investors got little from the $500,000 Anchorage purchase. The company announced the purchase in quarterly and annual reports. The project would be a very successful one for Bonneville Pacific, according to the reports.
But the project was mentioned briefly in only one subsequent annual report. No mention was made of it in following reports. The company wrote the project off as a loss in 1991, according to Funk's report.
And the Salt Lake company never collected on the $9.7 million note. Funk suggested in his report that Bonneville Pacific never intended to collect on the note.
Bonneville Pacific had a practice of accepting promissory notes on transactions with companies partially owned by Bonneville Pacific officers. But the nature of the notes or relationship with the companies was not disclosed to stockholders.
For example, Bonneville Pacific annual reports repeatedly state that Interwest was not related to Bonneville Pacific in any way when it purchased Dinuba. The report repeatedly refers to Interwest as "an unrelated company." However, Funk's report revealed that at least one Bonneville Pacific officer owned part of Interwest.
Failure to notify stockholders and the Securities Exchange Commission of that relationship could violate federal law, according to Funk's report.
Bonneville Pacific bought Interwest in January 1989. Although the company was valued at approximately $2 million, Bonneville Pacific forgave the $9.7 million note as part of the purchase price.
The promissory note served a purpose for Bonneville Pacific. The company reported the $9.7 million note as revenue paid to the company in several quarterly and annual stockholder reports following the sale of Dinuba.
The $10.7 million from Interwest - $1 million in cash and the note - comprised the bulk of the $12.7 million 1986 profits the company announced to its shareholders in the April 1987 annual report.
In the 1990 annual report, the company told stockholders it had purchased Interwest and, as part of the purchase, forgiven a note for $9,725,000. But the company did not tell stockholders that note was really the $9.7 million profits the company had referred to in three consecutive annual reports.
Instead, the annual report only said the forgiven note was "related to a prior sale of a facility."
The company also withheld from stockholders the fact that Interwest - which Bonneville Pacific paid more than $11 million for in cash and forgiven debt - was worth slightly more than $2 million, Funk's report says.
In addition, Bonneville Pacific continued to include Dinuba as a profitable Bonneville Pacific project in annual reports for several years after Bonneville Pacific actually sold the project.
By the time Bonneville Pacific bought Interwest in 1989, Interwest also had sold Dinuba, according to Funk's report.
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(Additional information)
Payments, loans to Corradini
Money paid to or loans made to Deedee Corradini from two foreign companies owned by Corradini and Bonneville Pacific officers, as listed on balance sheets:
From Lio Cam - an Isle of Mann company
- "Payment to Deedee Corradini, bank charges," $9,583, March 29, 1990.
From Sallah International - a Panamanian company doing business in Switzerland
- Personal mortgage, $381,939, shown on Feb. 28, 1990, balance sheet. (Mortgage was $249,412.83 on March 20, 1988.)
- "Long-term note," $50,002, Feb. 28, 1990
- Mortgage interest payment, $23,285, Jan. 9, 1989
- "Cash expense, Deedee," $7,197.92, December 1988
- "Cash expense Deedee," $4,278.82, August 1988
- "Travel expenses," $40,000, July 27, 1990
- "Additional bank charges to date," $4,632.49, Sept. 30, 1990
- "Loan to Ross and Deedee," $149,067.50, September 1989
- "Bank charges," $821.49, September 1989
These figures are taken from only a partial collection of balance sheets contained in court records. Bankruptcy Examiner Alan V. Funk was not able to obtain all of the balance sheets.