Was Rezko as surprised as he looked?

Secretive money management may have caught up with him

When U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve let him know he would be spending the night in jail, Tony Rezko's shoulders slumped and his head fell to the side in a look that said: "I-can't-believe-this-is-happening-to-me."

The surprised expression was right in character for Rezko, who from the start of his legal ordeal has carried himself as a man who believes there's been a terrible misunderstanding that will all go away just as soon as he gets a chance to explain.

On Monday, though, Rezko was jailed after his lawyers found it difficult to explain to St. Eve how it happened that their client received a $3.5 million wire transfer last April from a company in Lebanon just a few months after telling her that he was essentially broke -- in a bid to convince her to allow him to remain free on bond.

A night at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, with the distinct possibility of more to follow, might persuade Rezko to rethink the nature of his predicament.

I can't say that's why federal authorities were pushing so hard Monday to revoke Rezko's bond, but it has been known to have that effect.

What prosecutors said is that Rezko's money machinations show that he can't be trusted and therefore might flee the country, presumably to the Middle East, where he has business contacts and couldn't be extradited.

My own thought is more that it shows Rezko to be a wealthy man accustomed to playing secretive games with his money, who isn't all of a sudden going to stop just because he is under federal indictment.

After Rezko's legal team has had a chance to regroup overnight, it may very well be able to convince the judge that their man has no intention of going anywhere before the scheduled Feb. 25 start of his trial.

After all, the largest portion of the $3.5 million appears to have been used to pay his lawyers, and as they pointed out, he did return from a trip to Syria to face the charges against him.

One way or the other, I'm certainly hoping Rezko makes it to trial, which should prove both enlightening and entertaining -- even more so with the release of new filings from his defense team previewing a rock'em, sock'em counterattack.

Rezko lawyer Joseph Duffy and crew indicate they will seek to invalidate the expected testimony of key prosecution witness Stuart Levine on the grounds he is a drug addict who has been involved in a "pattern of corruption and deception dating back to at least the early 1990s."

I trust Levine will share with us every sordid detail, including how he rose to influence under the Republicans.

We've been told from the start by all sides that Rezko's finances are complicated, which led to the unusual arrangement under which a group of his friends and family posted nine properties to secure his $2 million bond.

Strangely, Rezko never was required to post his interest in a 62-acre parcel south of the Loop that is considered one of the prime development opportunities near downtown.

It was a business owned by one of Rezko's partners in that deal, British-based Iraqi billionaire Nadhmi Auchi, that paid Rezko the $3.5 million. Auchi, sometimes described in press reports as a financial associate of Saddam Hussein, was convicted of fraud in a French court in 2003 in an oil company kickback scheme.

In a tantalizing aside, Rezko prosecutors said he appealed directly to the U.S. State Department for help in November 2005 after Auchi was unable to enter the U.S. -- and also appears to have "asked certain Illinois governmental officials" to intercede on Auchi's behalf. They didn't say who.

The Rezko case revolves around allegations of wrongdoing in Gov. Blagojevich's administration, but it also now looms as a specter over the presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama because of his relationship with Rezko, a key fund-raiser involved in an odd real estate transaction with the senator. There has been no suggestion of wrongdoing by Obama in the government's case, but Monday's added attention was politically unhelpful.

Rezko was arrested early Monday morning in his Wilmette mansion, a far cry from whatever cell he was assigned to spend Monday night -- a long, fitful night -- to think about whether his explanation is going to be good enough.