Publisher’s note: StMaartenNews.com brings you a 3-parts series of articles on the Buncamper court case after careful analysis of the court verdict. In order to read the complete series, you will have to have a paid subscription. Click here for more information about subscribing with StMaartenNews.com. In the meantime, you can read the first part below...
PHILIPSBURG — After countless requests, the Common Court of Justice finally made a copy available of the verdict against (now suspended) parliamentarian Claudius Buncamper last week. The 68-page court ruling offers a detailed insight in the way Buncamper played the system to enrich himself, his wife Maria Buncamper-Molanus and his son Anthony. Buncamper has appealed the verdict – 32 months of imprisonment and a 7-year ban on holding any position in the civil service. This ban precludes his return from the warm seats of Parliament to that as Head of the Department of Infrastructure at the Ministry of Public Housing, Urban Planning, Environment and Infrastructure (VROMI).
The verdict reveals in sordid detail how Buncamper forged countless invoices in a way that made the VROMI-ministry pay for work that was done for him or his family and even for the Lions Club. It also shows how Buncamper took around 600,000 guilders ($335,593) in bribes from Robelto and Sons in exchange for granting them the contract to manage the dump and for turning a blind eye to violations of this contract.
Witness statements included in the verdict show that companies like Windward Roads and Robelto feared dire consequences if they did not dance to Buncamper’s tune. This is how his wife Maria Buncamper-Molanus obtained the contract for her company Caribbean International Financial Services to do the administration for Robelto against an obscene monthly fee and how his son Anthony found employment at the dump for a ridiculous high salary.
To be fair, the court also acquitted Buncamper of a few charges brought against him by the Prosecutor’s Office. The judges found no proof that Buncamper abused his position to facilitate the re-location of S&Y, a company owned by his daughter Sasha and son Anthony, from Mullet Bay to Kim Sha Beach. There is also no evidence that Buncamper abused his position to make sure that S&Y obtained a rental agreement and a building permit for the location on Kim Sha Beach.
These acquittals are however the least of Buncamper’s worries, because the main charges against him focus on bribery and manipulation of the tender for the management of the dump and on the forgery of a truckload of invoices.
There is plenty of evidence to underpin Buncamper’s conviction. The first charge deals with the fact that he accepted bribes and services from Robelto Flanders and Leroy La Paix between June 2, 2015, and August 30, 2018. The bribes total $27,700 in dollars and 188,800 ($105,475) in guilders, plus a service agreement with Caribbean International Financial Services (owned by Maria Buncamper-Molanus) worth 233,497 guilders ($130,445) and a labor contract for his son Anthony worth 128,832 guilders ($71,973). Total: $335,593.
Buncamper had to deliver a couple of things in exchange for this windfall. He produced a positive advice to promote that the management contract for the dump went to Robelto and Sons. He made sure that safety procedures and other obligations associated with the management contract would not be enforced.
See the follow-up story: Dump-management contract was the goose with golden eggs for the Buncampers
Between January 1, 2013, and December 31, 2014, Buncamper forged thirty invoices and purchase orders with a total value of $ 351,936, consisting of $98,637 in dollar-invoices, $207,090 in guilders-invoices and $46,109 worth of purchase orders.
These invoices were falsely addressed to Windward Roads for the provision of work, services and goods, while in reality these activities were not done at the request of Windward Roads. The invoices were charged to a preliminary budget Windward Roads had for work at the sewage plant. The VROMI-ministry paid all these invoices after Buncamper approved them with his signature.
Investigators found later that some of these invoices were related to security services at Buncamper’s house and that of Maria-Buncamper-Molanus’ mother, to placing a fence of the mother’s house, to a printer bought for the Lions Club, to embroidered jackets for the Leo’s Club and to improvements at the Lion’s Den in Sucker Garden.
Continue reading: Dump-management contract was the goose with golden eggs for the Buncampers
Dump-management contract was the goose with golden eggs for the Buncampers
PHILIPSBURG – Of all the shenanigans that landed the now suspended parliamentarian Claudius Buncamper in court, his malversations with the tender for the management of the dump have affected the people of St. Maarten the most. Because the fraudulent winner of the tender had no experience with landfill management, and because the bid it put in was lower than the fixed costs, the population had to endure a seemingly never-ending series of toxic dump fires.
The 68-page ruling the court released last week described in chilling detail how Buncamper went about his business, how he involved his wife Maria Buncamper-Molanus in the scam, how he landed his son Anthony a heavily overpaid job at the dump and how he even involved his daughter Sasha in preparing the documents that would result in the awarding of the management contract to Robelto and Sons, a company that cannot have had any experience with landfill management whatsoever, because it was established on June 2, 2015, 83 days before the tender would be published in local media.
The Ruby investigation began on June 7, 2018, after investigators received information about irregularities with the tender. Ruby focused initially on Buncamper and his wife Maria Buncamper-Molanus in the period May 1, 2015, to August 2018. They were suspected of conspiring to take bribes from Flanders and his company Robelto and Son in exchange for letting this company win the dump-management tender.
The VROMI-ministry published the tender on August 24, 2015, in the local media. On December 1, 2015, VROMI’s Department of Infrastructure (headed by Claudius Buncamper) produced an internal awarding advice. This document evaluated the two bids for the project: one from Robelto (worth 4,662,920 guilders – $2,604,983) and one from Windward Roads (WWR), the company that had managed the dump for the past fifteen years. WWR’s bid was higher: 7,187,762 guilders or $4,015,510. The department concluded that the contract had to go to Robelto. Buncamper and contract manager E. Richardson signed the advice.
On March 16, 2016, then VROMI-minister Angel Meyers signed the contract with Robelto for managing the dump from January 1, 2016, until December 31, 2017, with the option for a one-year extension. Robelto agreed to a price that was 200,000 guilders ($111,732) below its bid.
How did this happen?
On July 29, 2015, a former WWR-manager mailed the company’s bid document from 2011 to Buncamper. Investigators found the link to questionable activities after a house search at the Buncamper residence on August 18, 2015. On a computer belonging to Maria Buncamper-Molanus’ company Caribbean International Financial Services, investigators find a document with the file name planofaction.docx of Robelto. It is created by Maria Buncamper-Molanus with input from her daughter Sasha. The court states in its ruling that the contents of this document is identical to WWR’s 2011 bid – a document that was in Buncamper’s possession.
On August 28, 2015, investigators find another document on the confiscated CIFS-computer with the file name equipmentforworks.docx, again, from Robelto. The document contains the photos WWR submitted with its 2011-bid.
These findings reveal that Buncamper used information provided in good faith by Windward Roads to shore up the bid-documents for Robelto.
Jan Hendrik Boekaar, at the time director at Windward Roads, told investigators that things have to go the way Buncamper wants them to go. “Otherwise you end up in the dark world of St. Maarten.” Boekaar said that the lower bid of Robelto had made him sick. “If you added up all the fixed costs than you were already above Robelto’s bid. When we lost the tender I felt that they had screwed me.”
Boekar testified that, at Buncamper’s insistence, he had signed an agreement with Maria Buncamper-Molanus whereby she would help the company with work permits. “Those were bullshit-payments. We did not need this and I put a stop to it because nothing was happening.”
Former VROMI-Minister Angel Meyers told investigators that he had questioned Robelto’s experience with dump management. “WWR had managed the dump for years and I had never heard of Robelto. Buncamper did not share our concerns. He had smooth talks about why Robelto should win the tender.”
Meyers also stated that he was sure Buncamper received money from Robelto. “All of a sudden that company got all kinds of contracts: for garbage collection, for cleaning beaches and for managing the dump.”
On February 17, 2017, SOAB, the government’s accountants bureau, released a report about the dump management since January 1, 2016. The report speaks of a lack of expertise and a general lack of compliance management.
Buncamper was not the only one to benefit from the deal with Robelto. His wife Maria Buncamper-Molanus, a former minister of Public Health, also jumped into the fray. On January 4, 2016, her company CIFS signed an agreement for administrative services with Robelto. Price: $2,500 per month. On December 4, 2017, the price went up to $4,950 per month.
Between February 29, 2016, and April 19, 2018, Robelto paid CIFS 233,497 guilders ($130,445).
Leroy La Paix told investigators that the company paid way too much to Buncamper-Molanus. “When Marietje had the contract and we wanted to get rid of her, we did not want to wake up sleeping dogs. That was because of the function of Toontje Buncamper. (….) You want to stay on his good side.”
Asked why all garbage processing companies are approached by or sign contracts with Marietje’s company, La Paix said: “That is because of Buncamper’s function. He can make or break you. I don’t know what happens if you do no choose for Marietje.”
At Buncamper’s insistence, Robelto gave a job to his son Anthony. Salary: 6,725.25 guilders ($3,757) gross per month. Between January 29, 2016, and August 15, Robelto wrote 32 checks for Anthony with a total value of 128,832 guilders ($71,973).
Initially, La Paix had offered Anthony a salary of 1,800 guilders per month, but he later grudgingly agreed with a higher salary. The job: sitting in a container at the dump and writing down the weight of the trucks that came in. “After three months the weighbridge broke down. After that we just estimated the weight of the trucks.”
La Paix had yet another reason for paying young Buncamper a ridiculously high salary: “Toontje can be vindictive. I did not even have a job interview with Anthony. Marietje said that he was looking for work and that’s how it went down.”
About a month after Robelto started managing the dump, La Paix and Flanders got a visit from Buncamper. La Paix: “He wanted a fee of $6000 to $7000 per month to get the company running. Robelto gave Buncamper the monthly cash payments.”
Part of the money was made available to Buncamper through forged checks for Fernando Priest’s company Nandy Trenching. The invoices charged twice the amount Nandy was owed for its work. Priest cashed the check and gave half the money back to Robelto. From there, the cash disappeared into Buncamper’s pockets.
In court the now 59-year old Buncamper denied emphatically that he committed any crime. That fell on deaf ears and resulted in a conviction: 32 months of imprisonment and a 7-year ban from holding any position in the civil service. The court also hit his 54-year old wife Maria Buncamper-Molanus with a verdict for her role in the scam: 10 months of imprisonment.
Both defendants have appealed their verdicts.
Continue reading: An opinion piece by Hilbert Haar: Will the real Lions stand up?
Will the real Lions stand up?
By Hilbert Haar
Though I gave up my membership of the organization decades ago when I left the Netherlands, I am still a founding member of the Lions Club Almere.
Lions Clubs are gatherings of do-gooders. They consist of a mix of people with very different personal and professional backgrounds but they have one thing in common as far as their commitment to a Lions Club is concerned. They want to give back to the community they live in. They don’t steal from their communities. They organize fundraisers and use the money to support social projects and to support citizens who are less well off than they are.
Claudius Buncamper is a member of the Lions Club in Philipsburg. At one time he was the club’s treasurer. He was also the head of the department of infrastructure at the ministry of Public Housing, Urban Planning, Environment and Infrastructure (VROMI) and later even a Member of Parliament. These days, Buncamper is a suspended Member of Parliament which is as close as one can get to the status of former Member of Parliament. He is no longer head of the department of infrastructure; he had to give up that job when he chose to become a politician. But he is still a member of the Lions Club. And that bothers me. it bothers me a lot.
On December 23, the Court in First Instance sentenced Buncamper for, simply put, corruption to a prison sentence of 32 months and a 7-year ban on holding job in the civil service. He appealed the verdict but as long as that horse has not reached its stable he is of course still somebody with a criminal conviction to his name.
Among Buncamper’s many wrongdoings are two things that caught my attention in the context of his membership of the Lions Club. He forged a couple of invoices in such a way that the VROMI-ministry paid them in a roundabout way.
One invoice was for the purchase of a printer for the Lions Club. Another invoice was for embroidering logos on the jackets of Leo Club-members. And a third invoice was for improvements to the Lion’s Den in Sucker Garden.
The Lions Club ought to have a problem with all this. After all, the club is now in the possession of a printer that was basically stolen from the government. It’s Leos walk around with a logo on their jackets the club should have paid for – but it didn’t; just another form of stealing from the government. The improvements to the Lion’s Den fall in the same category. They benefit the Lions, but the bill ended up at the VROMI-ministry.
So what is the Lions Club supposed to do now? I figure that these revelations that stem from the Buncamper-verdict are, to put it mildly, slightly embarrassing. Maybe Buncamper hid from his fellow Lions what he did but then I wonder: nobody ever asked where that printer was coming from? Nobody wondered who paid for the improvements to the Lion’s Den or for the beautiful logos on the Leo-jackets? Maybe.
But right now the Lions Club can no longer deny that something went very wrong; something that put the club’s reputation at risk.
I think that the Lions Club can still make amends. Firstly, it ought to calculate exactly how much Buncamper’s shenanigans have cost the community and commit to pay it all back. How? Not through a fundraiser (that would saddle contributors with the bill). No, the Lions ought to pay out of their own pockets. Just collect contributions from the members until all the money is there. Then present the funds to the government with a sincere apology.
As a former Lion I am not in favor of jumping hastily to conclusions. Buncamper’s case is still on appeal, so his verdict is not irrevocable yet. Still, the Lions Club ought to consider the question whether somebody with such a questionable reputation can still remain a member. If the answer is no, then it ought to part ways with Buncamper.
Buncamper himself could also contribute to a solution by “doing the honorable thing.” I know, that concept is most likely not part of his vocabulary. But still, if he resigned from the Lions Cub voluntarily, even before his verdict becomes irrevocable, he would be doing the Lions organization a great favor.
I doubt very much that Buncamper will opt for this scenario, no matter how much I would love to be wrong.
In the meantime, will the real Lions stand up and speak their mind about what St. Maarteners like to call the way forward?
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