2 ex-DHB board members invoke Fifth at Brooks trial

Two of David Brooks' close associates on the board of directors of his former Westbury body-armor company have invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify at his trial.

The two, Gary Nadelman and Jerome Krantz, were DHB Industries board members when, government prosecutors allege, Brooks illegally received $6 million in personal expenses from the company and conducted a fraudulent stock scheme that made him $185 million.

Nadelman's signature is on a 1997 resolution by the compensation committee that supposedly allowed Brooks to charge the company for personal expenses. Prosecutors say the resolution was fabricated in 2004, when the Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating the company. Neither Nadelman nor Krantz has been charged with any wrongdoing.

The two declined Wednesday to answer questions - on the advice of their attorneys, they said - when they were asked to take the witness stand without the jury present at U.S. District Court in Central Islip.

Despite knowing that they would use the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, Brooks' defense lawyers had them take the stand anyway.

The move was part of an unusual legal maneuver to try to introduce as testimony depositions that the two gave in 2005 to SEC investigators. Nadelman and Krantz essentially said then that nothing illegal was occurring at DHB with regard to Brooks' compensation.

In most circumstances a judge allows such testimony or depositions only if the person who testified is unavailable, usually because the person has died.

Brooks' attorneys, Kenneth Ravenell and Richard Levitt, are arguing, in effect, that Nadelman and Krantz are unavailable to testify for Brooks because they've invoked the Fifth Amendment.

Federal prosecutors have said the 2005 testimony is not relevant or admissible because it occurred well before Dawn Schlegel, the former chief financial officer of DHB, began to cooperate with the government and became the chief prosecution witness against Brooks in the current case.

Schlegel has testified that the 1997 resolution "magically . . . appeared" in the file of board resolutions in 2004, after Brooks told her to search for it.

U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert said she will rule on the admissibility of the SEC testimony at a future date.