By Hilbert Haar
Wednesday’s court rulings in the Emerald-case against USp-leader Frans Richardson, former port-director Mark Mingo and Checkmate Security director O’Neal Arrindell mark a turning point in the history of St. Maarten-made corruption. Never before – at least not since the territory became an autonomous country in the Kingdom of the Netherlands – were a politician, a high-ranking manager of a government-owned company and the director of a security company at the receiving end of such severe prison sentences: 36, 46 and 66 months respectively. Richardson also got a five-year ban from the right to be elected, Mingo a 6-year ban from managerial positions at government-owned companies.
Don’t expect these people to go to prison any time soon because they will milk the judicial process to the extreme. That’s not a negative: the system simply allows defendants to go on appeal and to take their cases in the end to the Supreme Court for a final review. Such processes take time but they also protect defendants against wrongful convictions.
In the cases at hand the evidence is, in my opinion, ironclad and –spoiler alert! – appeals do not guarantee lower sentences. On the contrary, the appeals court could very well hand down even more severe punishments. In the past I have seen judges warn defendants against the risk of going on appeal and I have seen defendants who thought twice about such warnings before – knowing darn well what they had done – throwing in the towel and accepting the sentence handed down by the Court in First Instance.
It would not surprise me one bit if a defendant like Frans Richardson would maintain his innocence (arguing that he is going to appeal the verdict), that the board of his crime-infected USp-party would stand by him and that the few sympathizers he has left would shed crocodile-tears over so much injustice.
For members of the newly elected parliament the Emerald-case is an opportunity to make clear where they stand on the issue of corruption though the local tradition is of course to say nothing at all. Such an attitude is however also a statement. It’s a bit like saying: corruption is okay, we all do it when the occasion arises, but for God’s sake, don’t get caught.
Maybe somebody in the new USp-faction will have the nerve to speak out against the Dutch-dominated justice system. That would add insult to injury given the fact that MP-elect Claudius Buncamper and MP-elect Akeem Arrindell both have convictions for tax fraud to their names.
In the meantime the line of convicted (former) parliamentarians, MPs-elect and (former) ministers is getting longer and longer: Maria Buncamper-Molanus, Patrick Illidge, Silvio Matser, Chanel Brownbill, Claudius Buncamper, Akeem Arrindell – and now Frans Richardson. Theo Heyliger was acquitted in one case but he still has another court case pending.
Will this never end? You know what they say: every country gets the government it deserves. It also gets the parliament it deserves. And as long as parliamentarians continue giving the wrong example (by breaking the law or by failing to condemn wayward behavior) and as long as voters keep sending crooks to parliament nothing is going to stop the carnival. Sad but true.
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