Court Orders FIU to Return Confiscated Documents

Supreme Court Justice Michelle Arana today ordered the Financial Intelligence Unit to return documents belonging to Unicorn International Securities by Thursday of this week. UIS is one of several companies the FIU claimed assisted in laundering a billion dollars in profits from securities trading, thereby defrauding the U.S. Government. Six men – Belizean Andrew Godfrey, Bahamians Kelvin Leach and Rohn Knowles, American Robert Banfield and two Canadians were indicted earlier this year in Brooklyn, New York on federal securities fraud charges. In Belize the FIU raided local offices of several companies and took away documents and information. They also put a freeze order on the assets of these companies. That order was lifted on November tenth by Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamin after attorneys for the companies successfully argued that the FIU had no evidence against their clients. Today, Unicorn was in court to start a constitutional claim against the FIU. The company wanted its documents back, claiming that the government violated its rights. We spoke to attorney for Unicorn, Senior Counsel Michael Young.

Michael Young

Michael Young, Attorney for Unicorn International Securities

“We have filed on behalf of the claimant, Unicorn, a constitutional case claiming relief arising from the incident for damages and it included that the items that were seized were to be returned to our client. This is the first hearing date in respect of that constitutional claim and we filed distinctly an application for the urgent return of the documents and assets and that application was granted today. So the court issued an order for the documents and equipment to be returned to Unicorn within two days of today.”