EL CAJON, CA — A preliminary hearing will continue today for a former high-ranking leader of St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Cathedral in El Cajon accused of embezzling about $272,000 through a scheme involving cash rent payments from a church tenant.
Bishop Emmanuel Shaleta, 69, who remains out of custody and has since resigned from his post, faces 16 embezzlement and money laundering charges. The hearing will determine whether he will stand trial on the charges and is expected to conclude Friday.
Shaleta faces up to 15 years in state prison if convicted of all charges.
Testimony Thursday focused on allegations that Shaleta directed his secretary to start providing rent payments from a tenant of the church's social hall in cash directly to him, a departure from the church's usual money-handling procedures.
Shaleta is accused of collecting the monthly rent payments in cash, even though they typically would have been deposited by check into a bank account dedicated to church operations.
His secretary, Christine Dawisha, testified that Shaleta instructed her to tell the church social hall's tenant to begin paying his rent -- which exceeded $30,000 per month -- in cash rather than by check.
When she asked him why, he told her, ``We need the cash for the needy in Iraq,'' she testified. She also said she gave Shaleta those cash payments at his direction.
Rent payments would usually be deposited into the church's ``renovation account,'' but instead Shaleta wrote checks for the exact rent amounts from a separate bank account intended to help the needy and deposited the funds into the renovation account as a reimbursement, Dawisha testified.
After a few months of this, she said she notified members of the church's financial committee.
Garvin Garmo, who is a member of the committee, testified that the church's policy is to have two church leaders sign off on checks of this type.
However, each of the ``reimbursement'' checks Shaleta wrote was signed only by himself, according to Garmo. Dawisha testified that Shaleta told her one signature was sufficient because of the special nature of the ``needy account,'' but Garmo testified that no church bank account was exempt from the two-signature policy.
When confronted about this, Shaleta told Garmo it was ``an internal matter,'' but did not elaborate further, Garmo testified.
At Shaleta's arraignment earlier this year, Deputy District Attorney Joel Madero alleged that the cash provided to Shaleta ``vanished'' and that the movement of money from different bank accounts was intended to conceal embezzlement.
When a financial adviser for the church flagged discrepancies in the church's bank accounts, Shaleta ``provided completely unreasonable tales of where that money was going,'' such as giving the cash away to the needy, Madero said.
Shaleta was arrested in March at San Diego International Airport. The prosecutor alleged he was preparing to board a plane headed out of the county and had more than $9,000 in cash on him at the time.
