Insider Talking: June 30, 2003

The Bank of Bermuda sacked 14 staff in June after catching them distributing pornographic e-mails, reported The Royal Gazette newspaper; Imperial Consolidated co-founders Jared Brook and Lincoln Fraser are close to being arrested by the Serious Fraud Office in the United Kingdom, according to the June 12, 2003 edition of ‘Private Eye’, a British satirical magazine; Meanwhile, UK-registered financial services firm Kingsbridge Holdings PLC has partly blamed its “very disappointing” loss of £1.397 million (US$2.3 million) for the six months ended February 28, 2003 on Imperial Consolidated; While owners of web-sites in the United States are legally protected against libel actions from people who believe they have been defamed on Internet message boards, that does not appear to be the case in the Cayman Islands; In the United States, where there is a tax protester, there is usually an illegal offshore investment scheme not far behind and Eddie Ray Kahn, who lives in Sorrento, Florida, is no exception; The British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission issued a warning about Richmont Investments Inc. on April 10, 2003; Former Bank of Bermuda (Cayman) officer Marc Vanmarsenille, who lost his job in the aftermath of the Cash 4 Titles fiasco, is a defendant in a civil lawsuit filed at the Turks & Caicos Islands Supreme Court on November 7, 2002; At the same court, a lawsuit has been filed against TCI-registered Sealand Housing Corporation in an attempt to collect on a judgment awarded in the UK High Court; Two businessmen previously exposed in OffshoreAlert for their involvement in the sale and operation of sham offshore credit unions involving Nevis, Panama and the United States have each been sentenced to 25 years in prison, ten of which is suspended, for defrauding a 101-year-old woman out of her life savings; and If creditors of Bahamas-based Suisse Security Bank & Trust were wondering why the winding-up of the bank is taking so long, they should read the prelude to the recently-released written judgment by Bahamas Supreme Court Justice Austin Davis in which he turned down the bank’s attempt to regain its banking license, which was suspended on March 5, 2001 and revoked on April 2, 2001.