Tape Shows Henry Lyons Accepting Charity Donation He Allegedly Misspent
January 26, 1999
LARGO, Fla. - As the Rev. Henry Lyons accepted a $225,000 check to rebuild burned black churches, he told the Anti-Defamation League the money would immediately be sent to the aid of "the wheels that are squeaking the loudest."Instead, prosecutors say, Lyons deposited $60,000 into a savings account, gave $12,000 to his wife, sent money to love interests in Tennessee and Indiana and spent part of the money to redecorate his house and pay off credit card bills.
"We believed all the money had been expeditiously distributed to the churches in need of rebuilding," Mark Medin, director of national leadership of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, told jurors at Lyons' trial Tuesday.
Lyons, president of the National Baptist Convention USA, is charged with racketeering and grand theft, accused of swindling money from corporations seeking to do business with the convention and stealing funds from the ADL intended to rebuild black churches.
Medin said ADL leaders first began questioning where the money went when they received telephone calls from reporters in the St. Petersburg area.
Lyons accepted the money at the ADL's annual meeting in 1996, when a cluster of church arson fires, many of them involving predominantly black churches in the South, was making headlines. Jurors Tuesday saw a videotape made of the ceremony.
"We immediately determined where these funds should go, and the wheels that are squeaking the loudest at this point in time, we will give the funds to those churches," Lyons said on the tape.
Medin said Lyons followed up two weeks later with a letter saying six burned churches had received $35,000 each and there were more churches still in need. The ADL then forwarded him another check for $19,500, Medin said.
Lyons is charged with grand theft in the handling of the ADL funds. He and co-defendant Bernice Edwards both are charged with racketeering, accused of devising elaborate schemes to divert more than $4 million from corporations seeking to do business with church members. Prosecutors say they used the funds to buy themselves expensive homes, diamond jewelry and luxury cars.
Opening arguments in the trial were given Monday. In his defense, his lawyers argued that just because a business deal did not succeed doesn't mean a crime was committed. They said some of ADL money was held in bank accounts simply because Lyons hadn't decided yet how to distribute it.
Edwards' attorney described her as a naive and uneducated homemaker who was struggling to make ends meet.
January 26, 1999
Source: Newswire
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