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Published On: Mon, Dec 11th, 2017

Apartment complex in Oyster Pond at heart of corruption case against Corinne de T.

PHILIPSBURG – The anti-corruption task force (TBO) arrested Corrine de T. on Sunday on suspicion of money laundering, not reporting unusual transactions, operating a trust office without a permit and destruction of evidence. De T. is the former co-owner of the Standard Trust Company that played a role in the investigation against former head of immigration Marcel Loor in 2007.

De T., 54, was arrested in the course of an ongoing investigation into fraud with construction projects.

In December 2010, the Court in First Instance sentenced the Standard Trust Company and its three directors – Corinne de Tullio-Stamm, Allard Stamm and Jodi Lynn Garner – for money laundering and violating the law on reporting unusual financial transactions. The court imposed a $50,000 fine on the company. The three directors were sentenced to a 10,000 guilders fine and a conditional 1-year prison sentence with 3 years of probation.

The appeals court made the fine conditional. Carinne de Tullio-Stamm and Jodi Lynn Garner went to the supreme court which sent the case back to the appeal court where the two defendants were finally sentenced to a conditional 10,000 guilders fine.

Between 2004 and 2007 Standard Trust failed to report 119 unusual transactions to the financial intelligence unit (MOT); 76 of these deposits were for a total of $1.1 million, and 43 deposits for a total of almost €712,000. Most of them were cash deposits by Marcel Loor, the former head of immigration at the police force, who channeled the money via Standard Trust to his offshore company Santana Ltd.

In November 2013, the Court in First Instance found Corinne de Tullio-Stamm guilty of mismanagement and held her responsible for the complete deficit in the bankruptcy of Yordan Busarov’s Evmolpia Private Foundation. The court sentenced De Tullio-Stamm to pay the trustees in the bankruptcy, Hendrich Seferina and Maarten Le Poole of HBN Law an advance of 200,000 guilders on the deficit that could run into the millions of dollars.

Evmolpia’s bankruptcy is linked to a plan to construct an apartment building in Oyster Pond on a piece of land near the turnoff to the French side. Construction started but the building was never finished. Recently however, construction activities were restarted.

In April 2007, Standard Trust, of which the 50-year old De Tullio-Stamm is a director, established Evmolpia at Busarov’s request. Busarov and his girlfriend Penka Ivanova Cvetkova were the beneficial owners of the foundation. A couple of weeks later, Busarov gave the foundation the piece of land in Oyster Pond. The idea was to build an apartment complex and to sell the apartment rights to third parties.

In June 2007, Twoliwalks Construction – a company of Busarov – signed a contract for the construction of the complex with the understanding that it would be finished within twelve months.

On July 5 Albert van der Waag, a professor of behavioral and clinical medicine at the /American University in Cupecoy, bought two rights of apartment in the project for $500,000; he also loaned the foundation $400,000 at a stiff interest rate of 15 percent. In February 2009, the foundation borrowed an additional $775,000 from Van der Waag against the same conditions and with the understanding that the loan was due in august of that year. Van der Waag obtained a right of mortgage for $1,155,000 as security for his loan.

In the same month, the foundation sold three rights of apartment to Pentar Ltd., a company based in Anguilla for $1,200,000. On the same date (February 26, 2009), the foundation sold two rights of apartment to Beehive realtors NV for $800,000 and the economic ownership of two other rights of apartment to Van der Waag for $500,000.

Interestingly, both Van der Waag’s $500,000 purchase contract, the contract with Pentar and the deals with Beehive and Van der Waag’s second contract state that they paid the price in full to the foundation. Together with the two loans, Evmolpia received therefore $4,175 million.

In July 2009, De Tullio somehow smelled a rat. As a director of the foundation, the Standard Trust Company “accepted” the resignation of Standard Trust as sole board member and of Corinne de Tullio-Stamm as the sole member of the advisory board. They were replaced respectively by Yordan Busarov and his girlfriend Penka Cvetkova.

Four days after this decision, the loans were not repaid to Van der Waag and the apartments were not ready. Two years later, at a public auction in September 2011, Van der Waag bought five rights of apartment for $500,000.

On February 27, 2012, Evmolpia was declared bankrupt. When Corinne de Tullio was questioned as a witness in the bankruptcy on June 11, 2012, she stated that the foundation had never had a bank account and that the foundation never received the two loans from Van der Waag (totaling ($1,170,000).

According to the court ruling, De Tullio also stated: “Liabilities were contracted of which it was in my opinion foreseeable that they could not be honored. The foundation borrowed more and more money against a high interest rate, with short terms and high fines while the real estate market already was not too good.”

On June 25, 2012, the trustees put a lien on real estate belonging to De Tullio for an amount of $1,435,000.

Photo caption: This apartment complex in Oyster Pond, just before the turnoff to the French side is at the heart of Corrine de T.’s mismanagement conviction. Photo Hilbert Haar.

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