WATERLOO -- High-level employees of companies that bought most of their kosher meat from a Northeast Iowa meatpacking plant said they refused to pay some bills because the plant's invoices didn't match their records.
Albert Barel, controller at Los Angeles-based City Glatt, said when the trustee of Agriprocessors in January called bills from 2007 and 2008 past due, his company balked. City Glatt asked for proof of delivery, but the plant could could not produce any records.
"We saw there were a lot of invoices not in our records, so we did not pay," he said.
Defense attorney F. Montogomery Brown suggested Barel kept sloppy records, and pointed out the numbers in a spreadsheet detailing transactions between the two companies did not add up.
Brown said there was a discrepancy in a $200,000 check from September 2008 City Glatt cancelled because of insufficient funds. In its place, it wired a $100,000 payment to the plant.
"If the math at the beginning is wrong, isn't the math at the end wrong?" Brown said.
Steve Cohen, president of Twin City Poultry, said he also refused payment requested by the plant trustee.
A close friend of former Agriprocessors executive Sholom Rubashkin, Cohen said he had made personal loans to the plant as Rubashkin struggled to keep the business afloat.
Cohen said none of the invoices from November 2007 to October 2008 obtained from Agriprocessors showed up in his company's records.
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