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Published On: Thu, Feb 8th, 2018

Checkmate director behind questionable harbor-invoices

Cruise ships in Port St. Maarten with Dump Smoke over Philipsburg - 20180207 MPPHILIPSBURG – The trial of Keith F. – one of the suspects in the so-called Emerald-investigation – offered a candid insight in the way fraud was committed with inflated invoices at the Harbor Group of Companies on Thursday morning. The 53-year old owner of KG Construction invoiced the harbor between 2013 and 2016 for $891,901 and failed to report this income for income and turnover taxes. The prosecution put the fiscal disadvantage for the tax inspectorate at 756,618 guilders and demanded a 15 month prison sentence and a conditional fine of 250,000 guilders against the defendant.

Unlike the defendants that appeared in court on Tuesday and Wednesday, Keith F. had a story to tell. On Wednesday the prosecutor had already formulated his demand against F. because he did not show up for the trial. Later it appeared that he had been in the building, but in the downstairs courtroom.

The court therefore decided to reopen the investigation and give Keith F. a second shot at his defense. The contractor appeared without a lawyer. “I have no choice; I cannot afford a lawyer,” he told the court.

According to F. he only made one invoice for his company to the harbor. The others were made by a Mrs. Peterson, a bookkeeper who produced the invoices at the instructions of O’Neal A., the director of Checkmate Security.

“My work was to cash the checks,” F. told the court. “I kept $1,000 from each check and gave the rest to Randy.”

At the harbor there isn’t anybody working named Randy, investigators discovered. And though F. gave the court a description of the man, he was unable to provide a phone number for him.

The public prosecutor did not believe in the existence of Randy and said that the man F. was talking about must have been O’Neal A. “Is it correct what you told us about Randy?” he asked.

Courthouse RooftopThe defendant persisted: “I never gave money to Arrindell.”

F. said that he had sent a proposal in writing to harbor director Mark Mingo with a request for work. “The answer was that they did not have any work but that there might be a possibility for temporary jobs.” F. said. He later provided two workers to the port.

The judge remarked that bookkeeper Peterson had told investigators that KG Construction was one of the companies for which she made invoices at the instruction of O’Neal A.

“… everything in St. Maarten costs more than $1 million…”

The invoices from KG Construction were for the construction of a parking lot near the Walter Plantz Square. Asked what he thought this should cost, the defendant had told investigators, and he repeated it in court, “that everything in St. Maarten costs more than $1 million. So this must have cost a million as well.”

Earlier on Thursday morning the court postponed the case against Shervin W., in spite of objections by the public prosecutor. The court already postponed the case on Tuesday because attorney Shaira Bommel wanted to obtain information from the tax inspectorate about the fiscal disadvantage the prosecution had attributed to her client.

Bommel insisted on a correct calculation. The prosecutor said that the differences in such a calculation would be insignificant and have no effect on his demand.

But the court ruled that a correct calculation is in the interest of the defense and allowed a postponement until March 27.

The attorney will have to provide relevant documents about the calculation to the judge and to the public prosecutor, the latest three weeks before the trial.

“I grant the postponement but I will not grant a second postponement,” the judge told W.’s attorney.