3 Permanent Residents In Jail:
By Tameka Lundy -
Nassau, Bahamas:
Labour and Immigration Minister Shane Gibson sought yesterday to turn the scrutiny on the Free National Movement administration’s approval of permanent residency for several foreigners who are in jail.
He did so in a scathing response to a request for a status report on the investigation into the approval of permanent residency for American celebrity Vickie Lynn Marshall, alias Anna Nicole Smith.
Mr. Gibson referred instead to the approvals granted for Martin Tremblay, Derek Turner and Viktor Kozeny all of whom are being held incarcerated in relation to fraud and money laundering.
In the case of Tremblay, he said that the former FNM administration under former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham had granted the approval within 19 days, scoffing at the accusation that he had "fast tracked" Smith’s application in three weeks. Mr. Gibson said according to his documentation, Tremblay had applied on April 21, 1994 and was granted approval on May 10 of the same year.
Janet Bostwick was the Minister of Immigration at the time, he said.
He also claimed that Tremblay purchased a home in Sandyport, but sold it soon after his permanent residency status was granted. Under current laws, one of the conditions of the economic permanent residency status is the ownership and maintenance of a home worth at least $500,000.
"Don’t forget, when we sit around the Immigration Board, the minister is not the chairman, it’s the prime minister. The prime minister at that time was Hubert Alexander Ingraham. He was the person who approved this in 19 days," Mr. Gibson charged.
"Mr. Tremblay didn’t buy a house. You know what he did? He purchased a house in Sandyport…and the minute he got it he sold it and weeks after the other person came who got the house and they then applied for permanent residency as well."
He said while Tremblay, Turner and Kozeny are all in jail Mrs. Marshall is "home relaxing."
Tremblay, a Canadian investment banker who headed the Bahamas based Dominion Investments, laundered a hefty sum in accounts he kept in The Bahamas. He admitted to transferring $220,000 he believed was obtained through nefarious means to those accounts.
As part of a plea agreement, US prosecutors dropped the more substantial charge of laundering $1 billion in profits from narcotics trafficking and a series of other illicit activities. Tremblay is to be sentenced in mid February, 2007.
On this matter the morning sitting of the House of Assembly grew rowdy as there were claims and counterclaims across the floor.
Mr. Ingraham at one point sought to shift the focus to the governing PLP.
"Certainly if I found out that [Tremblay] or anyone else had gotten permanent residency and had immediately sold his house and subsequently went to jail we would have taken steps to revoke his permanent residency. I wonder whether or not the minister and the government have yet taken steps to revoke Mr. [Tremblay’s] permanent residency," he said.
Prime Minister Perry Christie said the government had initiated action in that regard.
"When Derek Turner was given permanent residency status [in The Bahamas] he was already convicted in New Zealand on fraud and was ordered to pay back millions of dollars," charged Mr. Gibson suggesting that the former administration should have conducted its due diligence.
Turner, a former Bahamas-based international securities trader was convicted last year in the US of running a phoney investment scheme and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. In total, Turner reportedly ripped off between $55 million and $80 million from more than 30 investors. He was also stripped of his Bahamas assets.
Kozeny is at Her Majesty’s Prison while he awaits a decision on his extradition to the US to face charges of corruption, money laundering and conspiracy in massive financial fraud involving billions of dollars.
The entire matter came up when North Eleuthera MP Alvin Smith asked the minister to provide a report on the status of the investigation he said that he would have undertaken into the Anna Nicole Smith affair. Her permanent residency approval became the subject of much controversy in recent months, part of the wider intrigue of the initially mysterious death of her son Daniel in the same hospital where she had given birth to a baby girl days prior.
Since then, a US developer has laid an ownership claim to the same waterfront home that was one of the key considerations in the approval of her permanent residency.
14 December 2006
Bahamian Politics
