Court upholds freeze of Ferguson account

A court in Liechtenstein has affirmed its previous freezing of a US$1.2 million account held by Maritime boss, Steve Ferguson. On September 1 the Princely District Court in Liechtenstein rejected an appeal by Ferguson against the freeze order granted to the State of Trinidad and Tobago last month, and affirmed the State’s right to probe the account. Ferguson is one of the accused in the Piarco Airport inquiry. Upholding the freeze order, Judge Dr Lothar Hagan rejected the claim of Ferguson (supported by affidavits from Ishwar Galbaransingh and Philipp Mc Kenzie) that the criminal prosecution being undertaken by Trinidad and Tobago was politically motivated. Sunday Newsday obtained a copy of the judgement.

The Judge found:
1.The defendant, Ferguson, presented no evidence to contradict the State’s position that there was wrongdoing in the construction of Piarco Airport.

2. That Ferguson failed to dispute the State’s contention that overpayments were made to various persons on the basis of corrupt procurement processes and corrupt invoices.

3. That Ferguson failed to provide evidence to disprove the State’s arguments that monies were paid to companies without any economic justification.

4. That evidence provided by the State, in particular the analysis of the money flow, strengthened the suspicion that the company structure established by Ferguson and others, served to cover up the proceeds of criminal action and to launder these proceeds.

5. That no evidence was provided to support the defendant’s claim that the transfer of funds between accounts owned by Ferguson (following the first set of corruption charges in TT), was pursuant to the repayment of a loan.

6. That the companies making payments into the Liechtenstein account — namely, Argentum Bahamas; South Western Enterprises, Bahamas; Neptune, Bahamas; and MFG International, Panama — all had Ferguson as the beneficial owner and that all these companies had received monies from companies involved in the Airport construction — namely, Calmaquip, USA and Northern Construction.

The Judge, in summary, concluded that the defendant, Ferguson, failed to prove that the funds paid into the Liechtenstein Account were based on arms-length transaction and that no corruption was involved. The Court’s documents said after the first set of charges against Maritime, Northern Construction, Galbaransingh and others, Ferguson had on the 13-05-2002 instructed the Bahamas branch of the Leu Bank, to close four accounts in which he was the beneficial owner and upon maturity to transfer the balances within these accounts to an account in Liechtenstein named, Corethra AG, at Verwaltungs-und Privat-Bank. As a result of Ferguson’s instructions, some US$1,270,240.01 was transferred between 23/05/2002 and 02/07/2002.

The four company accounts from which the funds were transferred were Argentum, Southwestern, Neptune, and MFG International, Panama. The State had argued that there was no economic justification for these transfers of funds and that the purpose of the payments was to cover up the proceeds of an economic irregularity. Ferguson, however, contended  that the money was a partial repayment  to a customer of a loan granted on 15/12/1993, by a company called  the International Private Finance Group in which he was a trustee. The judgement said that attachments to Ferguson’s  affidavits had omitted a translation into German, the official language of Liechtenstein, and so were not admissible in court. The Republic of  Trinidad and Tobago, the plaintiff, was represented by Holzhacker and Struth and the defendant, Corethra AG (the account owned by Ferguson), was represented by Meier Attorneys-at-law.