Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Busi­ness­man Steve Fer­gu­son has suf­fered yet an­oth­er de­feat in his bid to over­turn a judg­ment of over US$150 mil­lion against him, for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung, and a Unit­ed States busi­ness­man over al­leged cor­rup­tion re­lat­ed to the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

In a de­ci­sion de­liv­ered yes­ter­day, Ap­pel­late Judges Thomas Logue, Mon­i­ca Gor­do, and Fleur Lo­bree, of the Third Dis­trict Court of Ap­peal for the State of Flori­da, re­fused a mo­tion from Fer­gu­son to have his ap­peal, which they dis­missed in Sep­tem­ber, re­heard “en banc”.

Un­der the US court pro­ce­dure, un­suc­cess­ful ap­pel­lants can ap­ply to have their ap­peal re­con­sid­ered by all ten judges from the Ap­peal Court af­ter it is dis­missed by a three-mem­ber pan­el.

While the three judges de­nied Fer­gu­son’s mo­tion, they still with­drew their pre­vi­ous rul­ing on the ap­peal and sub­sti­tut­ed more de­tailed rea­sons.

The out­come means that Fer­gu­son and his co-de­fen­dants would have to mount a fi­nal ap­peal be­fore the US Supreme Court in or­der to over­turn the out­come of the case in that coun­try.

In their 21-page rul­ing, the judges fo­cused on Fer­gu­son’s com­plaints over the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Flori­da courts to hear and de­ter­mine the civ­il as­set re­cov­ery case. They not­ed that while the case deals with the con­struc­tion of an air­port out­side their ju­ris­dic­tion, Fer­gu­son, Kuei Tung and US busi­ness­man Raul Gui­ter­rez al­leged­ly com­mit­ted acts of fraud in Flori­da.

Stat­ing that Flori­da is a world des­ti­na­tion for fi­nance, busi­ness, and con­struc­tion, the judges said, “In in­ter­pret­ing Flori­da’s pre­sump­tion against ex­trater­ri­to­ri­al­i­ty, the sov­er­eign state of Flori­da has clear in­ter­est in pre­vent­ing, pun­ish­ing and pro­vid­ing a rem­e­dy for those dam­aged in part in Flori­da and in part abroad, as oc­curred here, by this type of crim­i­nal en­ter­prise op­er­at­ing out of Flori­da.”

They re­it­er­at­ed some of the al­leged crim­i­nal con­duct in the case linked to Flori­da.

He went ahead to out­line some of the ev­i­dence re­lat­ed to such.

“Fer­gu­son hatched the con­spir­a­cy in Mi­a­mi and ex­e­cut­ed parts of the con­spir­a­cy in Mi­a­mi, where he met with con­spir­a­tors to en­sure se­lec­tion of the project con­sul­tant, con­cealed trans­fers through an agree­ment he fab­ri­cat­ed, re­viewed doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to con­spir­a­tors’ il­lic­it pay­ments, and trans­ferred over $1 mil­lion to Mi­a­mi ac­counts held by Gutier­rez,” they said.

The US law­suit against Fer­gu­son, Kuei Tung, and Gutier­rez re­lates to the al­leged fraud and in­fla­tion of two con­struc­tion con­tracts and a main­te­nance con­tract for the air­port. In May 2023, Mi­a­mi-Dade Cir­cuit Court Judge Reem­ber­to Di­az en­tered fi­nal judg­ment against the trio for US$131,318,840.47 af­ter a ju­ry be­fore him up­held the civ­il as­set re­cov­ery case over crim­i­nal con­duct linked to the air­port project.

The fi­nal judg­ment ob­tained in the Mi­a­mi case was based on the US$32,385,988 in com­pen­sa­tion or­dered by the ju­ry, which has to be tripled, as the rack­e­teer­ing charges were filed un­der the US’s Rack­e­teer In­flu­enced and Cor­rupt Or­gan­i­sa­tions Act (RI­CO).

The coun­try al­so suc­cess­ful­ly sought US$38,876,972.89 in pre­judg­ment in­ter­est less US$4,631,691, which was pre­vi­ous­ly paid by the trio in set­tle­ments and resti­tu­tion.

The trio was sub­se­quent­ly or­dered to pay US$17 mil­lion in le­gal costs in­curred by the State in pur­su­ing the case.

The US case is sep­a­rate from three pend­ing lo­cal crim­i­nal cas­es over the air­port project. like­li­hood of se­cur­ing a con­vic­tion.

While the State was seek­ing to com­mence the en­force­ment process for the judg­ment, Fer­gu­son filed the ap­peal and pur­sued three lo­cal cas­es seek­ing to chal­lenge the US lit­i­ga­tion on the ba­sis of con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty.

Two lo­cal judges re­fused in­junc­tions seek­ing to de­rail the process. The case, in which Fer­gu­son has claimed the US lit­i­ga­tion has breached his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, is set to go on tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams in Jan­u­ary.