[StBernard] Ethics charges move forward against former St. Bernard clerk and her daughter

[Westley Annis]

Ethics charges move forward against former St. Bernard clerk and her
daughter

Print Benjamin Alexander-Bloch, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune By Benjamin
Alexander-Bloch, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune 
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on May 01, 2014 at 6:50 PM, updated May 01, 2014 at 7:31 PM

In ethics charges nearly identical to those filed against her mother last
year, former St. Bernard Chief Deputy Clerk of Court Lena Nunez now will
face a Louisiana Board of Ethics' adjudicatory board on charges of giving
her brother special treatment when it came to parish filing fees between
June 2009 and May 2011.

The state Board of Ethics voted on March 20 to file the charges against
Nunez, and the record of that filing became publicly available last month.
The board filed similar charges against Nunez's mother, long-time Clerk of
Court Lena Torres in January 2013.

Ethics Board Administrator Kathleen Allen confirmed on Thursday (May 1) that
the Nunez and Torres charges have been consolidated and that a telephone
call is set for July 24 between Torres and Nunez and the Ethics Adjudicatory
Board.

In addition to not requiring attorney Sidney Torres III to pay about
$175,000 in court filing fees, Nunez is accused of participating "in the
shredding and destruction of the billing records regarding her brother,
Sidney Torres', non-payment of advanced filing costs."

Meanwhile, while Lena Torres also is accused of not requiring her son Sidney
Torres to pay the filing fees, she additionally is charged with authorizing
"her daughter, Lena Nunez, to shred and destroy the billing records
regarding her son."

Lena Torres, who is now 93 years old, took over the parish clerk of court
office in 1988 after the death of her husband, Sidney Torres Jr., who had
held the post since 1956. She had started working in the clerk's office in
1940, when she was 19.

She lost the top seat to current current Clerk of Court Randy Nunez in
November 2011.

Torres' daughter Lena Nunez and Randy Nunez only are tangentially related --
Lena Nunez's deceased husband, "Boopie," was a distant cousin of Randy
Nunez's father.

During that 2011 election, Randy Nunez had alleged that Sidney Torres III
hadn't always paid clerk fees and that files were destroyed to cover up that
impropriety.

And during that clerk of court race, after Randy Nunez had made those
allegations, Sidney Torres III paid $99,566 of the $174,300 in filing fees
in October 2011.

The Board of Ethics charges stem from a December 2012 Louisiana legislative
auditor's report, which Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera conducted after
receiving an allegation from the Metropolitan Crime Commission.

In that audit, Purpera arrived at the $174,300 figures instead of the
$99,566 because there typically is a $300 advance filing fee for each suit.

Allen said on Thursday that Lena Torres and Lena Nunez could each face up to
$10,000 per violation.

Lena Nunez, who has applied for the open parish Registrar of Voters
position, served as deputy clerk of court from 1968 to 1988 and then as
chief deputy clerk from 1988 until she left the clerk's office on June 20,
2012.

Neither Nunez, Lena Torres, Sidney Torres nor their attorneys returned calls
for comment on Thursday.

Following the legislative auditor's report in 2012, their attorneys
adamantly denied the charges, with Sidney Torres' attorney Leonard Levenson
stating that he "has never requested, and was never afforded, any special
treatment by his mother, nor was he relieved of any financial obligation or
responsibility."

"We also find these allegations extremely offensive," Levenson said at that
time.

Lena Torres and Lena Nunez's attorney Freeman Matthews claimed in 2012 that
the audit "is riddled with misunderstandings, misapprehensions, faulty
presumptions, improperly skewed statistics and conclusions that are not
supported by the facts of the matter."

An attorney who has worked on hurricane and oil spill claims, Sidney Torres
III is the father of former SDT Waste & Debris Services garbage magnate,
Sidney Torres IV, who sold his company in 2011.

The 86-page audit report stated that the clerk did not collect all the
advance court costs for at least some of the 581 civil suit filings by her
son from between June 2009 and May 2011. The majority of the civil suits
were related to insurance claims and damages caused by Hurricane Katrina.

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