Judge removes co-executor of Cruz estate

03/27/2007 2:43 PM, AP


A state judge has removed one of the executors handling the affairs of the late Celia Cruz and ordered him to provide details on any deals he made regarding the singer, beloved as the "Queen of Salsa."

Superior Court Judge Peter E. Doyne, who sits in Hackensack, gave Luis Falcon two months to provide an inventory and appraisal of the estate's assets.

The judge's order stopped short of finding that Falcon had violated his financial obligations to the estate, but that issue could be revisited if Falcon fails to make an accounting.

Omer Pardillo, the other executor for the Cruz estate, had charged that Falcon was draining the estate's assets. Both men were named in Cruz's will to oversee her estate.

Pardillo had been joined in the effort by a court-appointed law guardian to represent Cruz's ailing husband, trumpeter Pedro Knight, who later died.

The judge's order was filed Friday and made public Tuesday by Pardillo lawyer Gilberto M. Garcia.

Garcia said Falcon wasn't represented by a lawyer in the dispute, and messages left at numbers he provided for Falcon in California weren't immediately returned Tuesday.

Pardillo claimed in a lawsuit filed last year that Falcon had siphoned funds from accounts for Knight, made "extravagant expenditures" and failed to account for transfers of more than $1 million from Cruz's estate.

Cruz died in 2003 at age 77 of a brain tumor. She rose to fame in the 1950s with Afro-Cuban group La Sonora Matancera, but left Cuba after the 1959 revolution. The Grammy-winning performer recorded over 70 albums.

She named Knight her sole beneficiary in her will, the lawsuit said.

Pardillo accused Falcon of exercising improper influence over Knight, who was 85 and suffering from dementia, the lawsuit claimed. After Cruz died, Knight moved to California with Falcon, the lawsuit said.

Knight died last month in Arcadia, Calif.

"What is imperative at this instance is Mr. Pardillo's endeavor to maximize the value of the estate and continue the artistic and humanitarian legacy of Celia Cruz," Garcia said Tuesday in an e-mail. "From what I am told, this was her greatest dream and it will be our obligation to her and to the people who loved her."