PHILIPSBURG–STC Administration and Management Service NV and Foundation Escrow STC’s directors C.D.T.S. and J.L.G. will be charged with a number of violations of the Ordinance on Unusual Transactions. They will have to answer to these charges during a court hearing on March 21.

Both trust office directors allegedly committed these crimes at STC Administration and its legal predecessor Standard Trust Company NV between January 31, 2008, and August 17, 2017. In total, they are charged with the failure to report unusual transactions to the total amount of approximately US $2.5 million.

De Tullio-Stamm and STC Administration and Management Service are also suspected of having destroyed or hidden evidence requested by the Anti-Corruption Taskforce TBO and the Kingdom Detective Cooperation Team RST in 2017.

The evidence concerned STC client R.M., a consultant from the Netherlands who is suspected of money laundering, bribery of government officials and failure to file taxes. According to the indictments, these crimes were allegedly committed between January 1997 and August 23, 2018, in Dutch St. Maarten, French St. Martin, the Netherlands, Spain, St. Kitts and Nevis, Anguilla, the Isle of Man and Panama.

R.M. was arrested by the Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service

FIOD, at the request of the TBO, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on August 23, 2018. The arrest and order for temporary custody resulted from the “Larimar” investigation into corruption, money laundering and the payment and acceptance of bribes in the construction sector in St. Maarten.

According to the TBO, R.M. has received millions of dollars from different (construction) companies on various offshore bank accounts through the years. He is suspected of having paid (part of) these funds to St. Maarten politicians. By use of this method, he illegally obtained an estimated profit of approximately $5 million, the TBO said.

The two STC directors were both sentenced in March 2016 to conditional fines of NAf. 10,000, on two years’ probation, for money laundering and violation of the Ordinance on Unusual Transactions.

This case against the trust company directors derived from the case against former police commissioner Marcel Loor, who was irrevocably convicted by the High Court of the Netherlands on October 9, 2012, and sentenced to 23 months, six of which were suspended, on three years’ probation.

In the new case, the Prosecutor’s Office will also demand the execution of these suspended sentences, it was announced Thursday.

Every company and individual offering financial services has been obligated since 2003 to report so-called unusual transactions of NAf. 10,000 and more to Unusual Transactions Reporting Centre MOT in Curaçao.

STC’s lawyers of Berman Law Office requested during Thursday’s brief preliminary hearing to hear a tax attorney to provide more insight into the tax office’s organisation and work. Despite the Prosecutor’s objection to the request, the judge decided that the attorney is to be heard by an investigating judge prior to the March 21 hearing.

Bron: Daily Herald