Source Photo: EReggae

Arthur Hall, Senior Staff Reporter

THE TRIAL of reggae superstar Buju Banton has again been pushed back, leaving the Jamaican to spend more time in an American jail before getting a chance to clear his name.

This has left the legal team of the reggae icon frustrated.

“The trial was pushed back to September 20 despite our objection,” David Oscar Markus of Buju’s legal team told The Sunday Gleaner.

“We are ready to go and Buju is looking forward to his day in court,” Markus added.

United States District Judge James Moody Jr last Thursday granted a one-week delay in the start of the trial based on a request by attorneys representing one of Buju’s co-defendants, James Mack.

Mack’s lawyers had written to the judge seeking more time to prepare his defence.

“The court grants this continuance to allow defendant Mack additional time to prepare for trial. The court finds the ends of justice served by the continuance to allow the defendant more time to prepare outweighs the best interest of the public and the defendant in a speedy trial,” the judge said in his ruling handed down last Thursday.

This is the fifth change in the scheduled start of a trial for Buju, who has been languishing in custody in Florida since last December when he was arrested on charges of conspiracy to possess cocaine, and aiding and abetting the possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime.

Buju – whose correct name is Mark Myrie – Mack, and Ian Thomas were held following a sting operation by US law- enforcement officials.

Latest album
Initially, their trial was set to begin on March 3, but due to conflicting reports, the defence moved to start the trial on April 12. The court granted the motion and set the trial to begin on April 19. This was later shifted to June 21, and then to September 13.

The new trial date is just over one week before the scheduled release of Buju’s latest album titled Before The Dawn.

The album will contain 10 tracks that comprise some of the more prophetic songs written by Buju since his entry into the music business more than 20 years ago.

The album’s unofficial anthem is Innocent.

Source: eReggae Guide

HOUSTON — Jailed Texas financier R. Allen Stanford and two of his former company executives — accused of bilking investors out of $7 billion in a massive Ponzi scheme — lied to investors and falsified financial statements, disqualifying them from having their legal bills paid for by an insurance policy, attorneys representing the insurer told a federal judge on Tuesday.

But Stanford and ex-executives Gilbert Lopez and Mark Kuhrt contend they did nothing wrong, blaming others for the alleged wrongdoing and saying the insurer should honor the policy.

“You will see there wasn’t a Ponzi scheme. There was no fraud committed and there wasn’t any misrepresentation,” said Bob Bennett, Stanford’s attorney. “He ran a legitimate business and was seen as a very, very fine businessman.”

U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas is holding a court hearing on whether the insurer, Lloyd’s of London, will continue paying their millions of dollars in legal fees. The hearing, which might last up to four days, could also provide a preview of the upcoming criminal trials in the case.

So far, Lloyd’s has paid more than $15 million in legal fees to Stanford and the executives in their criminal and civil cases. The policy will pay up to $100 million. Stanford alone has spent more than $6 million by hiring and firing attorneys from at least 10 different law firms. A third executive, Laura Pendergest-Holt, who had also been fighting for payment of her legal bills, settled her case with the insurer on Monday.

Barry Chasnoff, an attorney for Lloyd’s, told Atlas the policy doesn’t pay on charges of money laundering, one of the many counts Stanford and the ex-executives face in a federal indictment.

Stanford and the former executives are accused of orchestrating a colossal pyramid scheme by advising clients from 113 countries to invest more than $7 billion in certificates of deposit at the Stanford International Bank on the Caribbean island of Antigua, promising huge returns. Stanford’s businesses were headquartered in Houston.

Authorities say Stanford, the once flamboyant billionaire whose financial empire stretched across the U.S., the Caribbean and Latin America, and the executives fabricated the bank’s records, bribed Antiguan regulators with investors’ money from a secret Swiss bank account and misused funds to pay for Stanford’s lavish lifestyle.

The insurer’s case mirrors the accusations made against Stanford; Lopez, the ex-chief accounting officer; and Kuhrt, the ex-global controller officer, by prosecutors in the criminal case in Houston and by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a lawsuit it filed in Dallas.

Chasnoff said his evidence, including testimony from financial fraud experts and reviews of company records, will show Stanford and the two ex-executives committed money laundering because they falsified financial reports that lured in investors with enticing but fictitious rates of return on the certificates of deposit. Chasnoff said all three men worked to hide from authorities that Stanford secretly diverted more than $1.6 billion in investor funds as personal loans to himself.

“You will hear some interesting excuses about what they did,” Chasnoff said. “In the end you will see the evidence is overwhelming.”

Stanford and the two ex-executives were not testifying, asserting their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

But their attorneys told Atlas the men did nothing wrong, instead putting part of the blame on James Davis, Stanford’s former chief financial officer. Davis has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with authorities.

Prosecutors attended the hearing, giving them a preview of the defenses Stanford and the other executives might present at their criminal trials.

Stanford’s trial, being handled by another Houston federal judge, is set to begin Jan. 24. The others will be tried after that. Besides money laundering, Stanford and his one-time colleagues have also been indicted on charges of wire and mail fraud.

AP

Source Photo: OTG News

Arthur Hall, Senior Staff Reporter

In Jamaica, a similar message went out from several church pulpits as clergymen told their congregations about the “heaven on earth” that was being offered by the huge returns on investments in Olint.

Smith was a member of Church on The Rock, the ‘uptown’ of local churches, and self-appointed prophets declared that God had blessed him with a special gift to cure poverty. From populace pulpits, men of the cloth encouraged congregants to invest. The message became part and parcel of the prosperity gospel, and some church leaders dared to shift their organisations’ acounts – made up mostly of tithes and offerings – to Olint.

Pastor Blair believed the prophetic claim, and he announced plans to use the money made from Olint to open a shelter for the poor in Jamaica.

On paper, Pastor Blair thought he had turned US$4 million into US$11 million, but when he tried to make his first withdrawal to start work on a hospital he was planning to build in Jamaica, he found out the money was all gone.

“It’s heartbreaking. It’s a terrible thing, and I hope he (Smith) pays for it,” Blair told a United States publication recently.

Bishop Peter Morgan of City Life Ministries was one of the few local clergymen admitting to losing money in Olint.

According to Bishop Morgan, some of his “friends and colleagues suffered more – mostly churchfolk – both locally and overseas.”

That is a story that is being repeated hundreds of times over as persons in Jamaica, the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI), and the United States come to the realisation that it is unlikely that they will get back any of the billions of dollars invested in Olint.

The Pied Piper

Instead, Smith, the man they once referred to as the “Pied Piper of the financial world”, is now facing 30 charges in the TCI and 23 charges in the US.

According to a businessman who lost millions in Olint, it was the investors who sought out Smith.

“I don’t remember David ever asking a man for money. He is like the Pied Piper – people just following and wanting to give him money.”

This has left hundreds of people burnt in what could turn into a US$1 billion international investment scam.

The victims were all promised big returns, but many of them lost everything, and US prosecutors now claim that Smith fooled thousands of people into buying into a Ponzi scheme.

The prosecutors charge that Smith promised low-risk and high returns in one of the riskiest markets, and used money from new investors to pay old investors to trick them into believing that the foreign-exchange trading scheme was flourishing.

According to the prosecutors, Smith used his clients’ money to “finance a lavish and expensive lifestyle, and from which he and others received millions of dollars in goods, services and other benefits”.

Those who benefited are many; but those who got burnt are even more.

Local politicians enjoyed riding in Smith’s jet, and many made no secret of their annual trip to the TCI to attend his birthday party.

Others sent him emails thanking him for his campaign contributions, which “made our annual conference a success”.

Emails which have been going the rounds suggest that the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) general election victory in 2007 was largely funded by Olint.

The emails contained messages purportedly sent by the members of the JLP hierarchy asking Smith for funds or thanking him for his support.

Olint was also a one-time sponsor of the annual Jazz and Blues Festival, with entertainment insiders putting his contribution at US$400,000. That figure was never confirmed.

But several questions have always surrounded the operations of Olint, which promised high returns based on trading in one of the most unpredictable markets in the world.

By 2006, after almost two years of operations, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) in Jamaica turned its spotlight on Olint.

The FSC and the Financial Investigations Division of the Ministry of Finance and Planning executed search warrants under the Securities Act on the offices of Olint and LewFam Investments on March 3 and March 6, 2006, and seized documents.

The FSC determined that although claiming to be carrying on foreign currency trading activities, Olint and its associate entities were engaged in securities activities in breach of Sections 7 and 8 of the Securities Act.

The FSC issued cease and desist orders against them on March 24, 2006.

Bomb threat

By July, Olint closed its offices in Jamaica, and in an email sent to club members, Smith claimed that the closing was a result of threats to staff, including a bomb threat.

The email acknowledged that the threats might have resulted from the failure of the scheme to honour redemption, which it blamed on FSC actions, court conditions for the stay of execution, and actions by local commercial banks to close Olint accounts.

The banks, particularly National Commercial Bank (NCB), came in for immediate criticism from the Smith backers as a court battle went all the way to the Privy Council to determine if Olint’s accounts could be closed.

With the Privy Council siding with NCB, Smith packed up and moved to TCI, where he set up shop.

But by July 2008, the authorities in the TCI moved against Smith, sparking what now appears to be the beginning of the end.

He was arrested and charged before being granted bail to the tune of US$1 million.

With that matter before the courts in the TCI, the prospect of investors getting back their money seemed less likely when regulators closed down the Turks and Caicos Bank which left Olint accounts entombed in that bankrupt entity and subject to the process of liquidation.

Extradition

If that was not enough, US authorities last week indicted Smith on 23 charges and hinted that they would be seeking his extradition.

But despite the obvious issues surrounding the failed foreign exchange trading club, Smith’s defenders remain many.

On the social network site Facebook, there is a group christened Defenders of David Smith/Olint. One posting on the site says: “If you are like us and sick and tired of the rumours and the vampires who are trying to destroy David Smith and Olint, join this group and let us tell the world and all his detractors to go directly to hell.”

Another posting says: “The man has way better intentions than most, and believe it or not, he’s fighting for more Jamaicans to make some more money.”

They obviously still have faith in Smith, who had worked for several years as a licensed representative of Jamaica Money Market Brokers Limited, reputedly spe-cialising in international foreign-exchange trading.

He branched out on his own, forming a “club”, where a few friends would trade foreign currencies.

Flood of investments

The word quickly spread, as members reported making hand-some returns of as much as 15 per cent a month.

That sparked a flood of investments as persons sold property, sought loans, and broke open their savings accounts to cash in on what was to many easy cash.

The foreign-exchange market is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average turnover estimated at well over US$1 trillion.

About five per cent of daily turnover is from companies and governments that buy or sell products and services in a foreign country or must convert profits made in foreign currencies into their domestic currency.

The other 95 per cent is trading for profit, which Smith claimed to do before being exposed by the authorities.

As the world of the ‘Piped Piper’ began to crumble in 2008, Smith said: “I have not appropriated members’ funds for my own purposes, nor have I engaged in criminal activity. However, I need around nine months to pay back Olint members. The funds remain intact.”

Those nine months have long gone, but, still, Olint investors are waiting to get back their money.

Source: GLEANER

According to witnesses, she was leaving a friend’s house, approximately 50 paces away from her front door. She had just stepped over to her friend’s house close by, to have a drink. Witnesses say that she left her front door open (a sign that she wasn’t going to be away for long), and while walking back, a gunman shot her with a high-caliber weapon.

Sanchez’s family, who is still mourning the loss of a loved one who died just a few months ago, was shocked at the murder.

Amandala spoke with Sanchez’s niece.

“Right now information is very sketchy, because the information we have right now is what is coming in from witnesses off the streets. According to my sister, they heard the gunshots around 11:45 p.m. At about 12 o’clock, we got a call that it was my aunt who got shot.”

Sanchez’s niece went on to relate that, as they understand it, when she was walking back home from the friend’s house where she had gone to take a drink, a young man who is estimated to be a “young teenager”, about 15 years in age, “was waiting on her.” The young man was reportedly wearing a red shirt and opened fire on her with a powerful weapon that some claim was a machine gun. Sanchez, according to the niece, was reportedly hit by 5 of the 6 shots fired at her.

“The reasons why, as we heard, that this took place,” she said, “ was that my Aunt Shelly was a witness to a murder which happened right around here. She had been receiving death threats on her through phone calls, and she had decided that she would not be testifying in the murder trial”.

When asked what murder Sanchez witnessed, her relative said that she couldn’t remember the full name of the murder victim, but recalled him as being Nembhard, who she and other residents in the area knew as “Kalad”. We found out that the Nembhard she was referring to was Dennis Nembhard, who was murdered on June 2009, on Oleander Street. Nembhard was believed to have been killed with a single shotgun blast.

She said that her family is shocked that this murder happened. She also said that just three months ago, her uncle was charged for allegedly killing her grandfather, and they have still not come to terms with that tragedy as yet.

The grandfather that Sanchez’s niece was referring to is Clifton Grant, 80, whom we reported was allegedly beaten to death by his son, Glenford Grant, 26, reportedly for 25 cents, back in May 2010. Grant is currently remanded and awaiting trial at the Supreme Court.

Family and friends remember Sanchez as a very humble and easy-going woman who was kind and willing to help. She was an avid follower of the Open Doors Believer’s Chapel, and was like family to the members of the church.

Source: Amandala

The Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) has reached a settlement with its players which ends the impasse between the board and the West Indies Players’ Association (WIPA) – the representative body for cricketers in the region – over the distribution of the participation fee for the Champions League Twenty20 and issues concerning the team’s image rights for the tournament.

Guyana qualified for the Champions League by winning the Caribbean T20, but a dispute over contract negotiations between the GCB and the players association raised doubts about their participation in the tournament.

The crisis grew when the GCB secured an injunction against WIPA from the acting Chief Justice of the country, barring WIPA from making alterations to the board’s contract with the tournament organisers. The injunction and the escalating controversy prompted the intervention of the Guyanese government, leading to a settlement after a meeting between Chetram Singh, the GCB president, and Ramnaresh Sarwan, the Guyana captain.

The WIPA had objected to the WICB’s decision to keep a third of the participation fee – US$500,000 – claiming that “retaining such a large sum could have a direct negative impact on Guyanese cricket and its players”. It reportedly alleged the GCB had not responded to its proposal of distributing the remaining two-thirds. Also, the image rights of the team members were claimed by the West Indies Players Management Company (WIPMACOL), which is said to have sought the WIPA’s involvement in the GCB’s agreement over the same with the Champions League.

The issue however seems to have been resolved now, allowing Guyana to concentrate on the Champions League. “We consider this the end of any problem with contracts and are now focusing on our preparation and training camp for South Africa,” Singh told the Sunday Express after his meeting with Sarwan. “Once there is an agreement, the injunction is not important… that is of no importance whatever, I don’t know what the legal term is but we consider it over.” The details of the settlement are not yet known.

The impasse served as a repeat of a similar breakdown in negotiations between the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board and WIPA prior to the inaugural Champions League last year in India.

© ESPN EMEA Ltd.

Monday August 9, 2010 – Priya Levers has officially been kicked off the bench in the Cayman Islands.

A week after the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council advised that she be removed, because of misconduct, Governor Duncan Taylor has accepted the recommendation.

“His Excellency the Governor, Mr Duncan Taylor, CBE, having received and considered that advice has in accordance with section 96(3) of the Cayman Islands Constitution Order 2009 removed Madame Justice Priya Levers from the Office of Judge of the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands,” a statement from the government said.

Levers’ dismissal took effect last Friday.

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council recommended the move last month, more than two years after complaints of misbehavior were first made against her. It said the judge had made comments in court “which ranged from the inappropriate to the outrageous about those who appeared before her and to her own colleagues.”

As such, it said, she was “not fit to continue to serve as a Judge of the Grand Court”.

In its ruling issued a month after a four-day hearing in June, the Judicial Committee said that the judge has many admirable qualities but also stressed that there were “fatal flaws” in her judicial career.

“Levers J has high standards and shows strong disapproval for those whom she does not consider measure up to them. That disapproval has extended both to some who have appeared in her court, and to her own colleagues,” the Judicial Committee noted. “Unfortunately, she has not kept that disapproval to herself. It has led her repeatedly to make in court comments that have ranged from the inappropriate to the outrageous about those who have appeared before her and, on two occasions, about her judicial colleagues.”

“So far as those who appeared in her court were concerned, the disapproval and inappropriate comments in evidence before the Board appear to have been directed predominantly against women, and particularly women from outside the Cayman Islands,” it added.

Levers, who was born in Sri Lanka, married a Jamaican in 1977 and moved to that Caribbean island, where she practiced for 27 years.

In 2002 she was invited to sit as an additional judge of the Grand Court and in the following year she applied successfully for a permanent appointment to that court.

Source Photo: Caribbean 360 News

PORT OF SPAIN, Trindiad, Friday August 6, 2010 – An attorney-at-law who represented Jamaat Al Muslimeen leader Abu Bakr in several cases is making it clear he wants to be the first one paid after government auctions off properties belonging to the radical group later this month.

The call by former United National Congress (UNC) opposition chief whip Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, comes less than two weeks before 11 properties belonging to Abu Bakr and senior Jamaat member, Kala Akii Bua, are put on the auction block to compensate the State for the TT$32 million (US$5 million) in damage done during the group’s coup attempt in 1990.

Maharaj claims that Abu Bakr owes him TT$92,650 (US$14,706) in legal fees.

Media reports indicate that Maharaj’s law firms – Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj and Co, and then Daltons – had been legal representative for the Muslim leader since at least around the time of the July 1990 attempted coup and later defended him in at least 16 civil lawsuits between 1992 and 2006.

Maharaj has written to Attorney General Anand Ramlogan demanding that when the government recovers money from selling Jamaat’s properties on August 17th, he should not be forgotten.

“We note that you are in the process of auctioning the properties pursuant to an order obtained on a Summons for Sale and wish to draw your attention again that our judgments take priority to yours…and any Summons for Sale the liability to this firm must be satisfied before payments are made to you,” Maharaj’s law firm of Daltons wrote in a letter dated June 27th, 2010, to the Chief State Solicitor and copied to Ramlogan.

The Attorney General has not responded to Maharaj’s demand.

Source: Caribbean 360

TEXAS, United States, Wednesday August 4, 2010 – Ralph Janvey, the US receiver seeking to recover assets belonging to fraud-accused Allen Stanford and his companies, is now targeting the employees of the former billionaire.

He’s suing them to get back the money they received after investing in the allegedly fraudulent certificates of deposits (CDs) from the Stanford International Bank Limited (SIBL) that are at the centre of Stanford’s fraud case.

Janvey has identified 77 employees who received individual sums ranging from to just over US$52,358 to US$3 million.

“Collectively, these 77 former employee investors received over US$27 million in CD proceeds, at least,” Janvey wrote in his complaint filed last month, insisting that what they got was “stolen money”.

“The CD proceeds the former employee investors received from SIBL were not, in fact, their actual principal or interest earned on the funds they invested. Instead, the money used to make those payments came directly from the sale of SIBL CDs to other investors. When Stanford paid CD Proceeds to the Former Employee Investors, he did no more than take money out of other investors’ pockets and put it into the hands of the former employee investors,” he added.

Janvey’s lawyer has also written to the individual employees, demanding the money back.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US claims that Stanford sold US$8 billion in certificates of deposit (CDs), through his SIBL, to clients all over the world, using false promises of high interest rates.

It has alleged that what Stanford actually operated was a Ponzi scheme in which investors are paid, not by any return on their investment, but with the money paid in by investors who come after.

AP Source Photo

Two men were convicted Monday of plotting to blow up jet fuel tanks at John F. Kennedy International Airport, a terror plot that authorities said was meant to outdo the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and avenge perceived U.S. oppression of Muslims around the world.

A jury in Brooklyn federal court deliberated about five days before finding Russell Defreitas and Abdul Kadir guilty of multiple conspiracy charges. Kadir was acquitted of one charge, surveillance of mass transportation.

Defreitas, a former JFK cargo handler, and Kadir, once a member of Guyana’s parliament, were arrested in 2007 after an informant infiltrated the plot.

Prosecutors alleged that Defreitas, a 66-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Guyana, and Kadir, 58, wanted to kill thousands of people and cripple the American economy by using explosives to blow up the fuel tanks and the underground pipelines that run through an adjacent Queens neighborhood. Authorities say the men sought the help of militant Muslims, including an al-Qaida operative, in Guyana.

The defendants wanted to set off an explosion “so massive … that it could be seen from far, far away,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Zainab Ahmad said in closing arguments.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/ny_jury_convicts_in_jfk_airport_koA8vXfNwpTvkWwIOU1gKJ#ixzz0vTi1iW59

Source: Associated Press

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands, Friday July 30, 2010 – A female judge in the Cayman Islands faces being kicked off the bench after the United Kingdom Privy Council ruled that her misconduct has made her no longer fit to serve.

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council recommended that Madam Justice Priya Levers be removed, more than two years after complaints of misbehavior were first made against her. The committee said the judge had made comments in court “which ranged from the inappropriate to the outrageous about those who appeared before her and to her own colleagues.”

The Governor of the Cayman Islands had appointed a tribunal in September 2008, to look into the complaints made against Justice Levers five months earlier. In August 2009, the tribunal advised the Governor to refer the matter to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and, after a four-day hearing last month, that body has given its advice.

“The Board is satisfied that by her misconduct Levers J showed that she was not fit to continue to serve as a Judge of the Grand Court and humbly advises Her Majesty that she should be removed from that office on the ground of her misbehavior,” it said on its website yesterday.

In its ruling, the Judicial Committee said that the judge has many admirable qualities: “She is a sound lawyer. She is industrious and she sets high standards. She had many admirers at the court,” it said, referring to witnesses who spoke highly of her.

But it said there were “fatal flaws” in her judicial career.

“Levers J has high standards and shows strong disapproval for those whom she does not consider measure up to them. That disapproval has extended both to some who have appeared in her court and to her own colleagues. Unfortunately, she has not kept that disapproval to herself. It has led her repeatedly to make in court comments that have ranged from the inappropriate to the outrageous about those who have appeared before her and, on two occasions, about her judicial colleagues,” the Judicial Committee noted.

“So far as those who appeared in her court were concerned, the disapproval and inappropriate comments in evidence before the Board appear to have been directed predominantly against women, and particularly women from outside the Cayman Islands,” it added.

The ruling identified one instance at a sentencing hearing in May 2007 in which the judge repeatedly interrupted the mitigation of a lawyer representing a man who admitted to causing serious bodily harm to his Jamaican girlfriend, to berate the woman in her absence.

Her comments and behaviour were so blatant, that the court reporter at the time drew it to the attention of the Chief Justice, writing that “despite the defendant pleading guilty, Justice Levers seemed to turn the focus of the proceedings on the female victim and seemed to indicate she had brought it on herself”.

“I had never seen anything like this in my 14 years of court reporting. In my opinion Justice Levers appears to have a problem with Jamaican women,” she wrote.

The Judicial Committee agreed.

“There was no justification whatsoever for this series of interventions, which flagrantly violated the Bangalore principles. They showed bias, and indeed contempt, for Jamaicans which extended not merely to the defendant but to his victim who, happily, was not in court. The comments about (the victim) were monstrous, suggesting that she should have been sent “home”, describing her as “a woman like that” and accusing her of “spreading her goodwill around” – a clear allegation of promiscuity,” it said.

However, the Judicial Committee insisted that “it would not be right to deduce from those instances any race or gender bias on the part of Levers J.”

It did say, though, that it agreed with the tribunal that the aforementioned incident constituted misbehaviour that would, of itself, have justified the judge’s removal.

Interestingly, the Sri Lankan-born Justice Levers married a Jamaican in 1977 and moved to Jamaica, where she practiced for 27 years. In 2002 she was invited to sit as an additional judge of the Grand Court and in the following year she applied successfully for a permanent appointment to that court.

Governor Duncan Taylor, who has the task of removing Justice Levers, is expected to make an announcement on the matter on his return to the Cayman Islands next Monday.

Source: Caribbean Net News