Unpacking Lev Dermen and His Belize Connections
The trial of Lev Dermen in the U.S. District Court of Utah before Judge Jill Parrish recessed today and will resume on Monday morning. News Five has been following very closely the developments leading up to the hearing, as well as the details of what is transpiring during the trial. Earlier today, we spoke via Skype with Nate Carlisle, a journalist for the Salt Lake Tribune. He has been covering the case extensively and shared with us details involving John Saldivar’s alleged communications with Jacob Kingston who is set to testify against Dermen. Those particulars were gleaned from a pretrial hearing held on January thirteenth. Here’s our interview with Carlisle.
Nate Carlisle
Nate Carlisle, Reporter, Salt Lake Tribune
“The two sides have been arguing over evidence in the case and some of that evidence includes text messages between Jacob Kingston and John Saldivar and according to prosecutors who presented some of this evidence to the judge, Mr. Kingston is going to testify that the defendant, Lev Dermen was sending cash payments to John Saldivar and that Mr. Kingston eventually took over those payments.”
Isani Cayetano
“Okay this came out in the case management conference, correct?”
Nate Carlisle
“Yes, they call it a pretrial hearing, but yes, that’s accurate.”
Isani Cayetano
“So, give us now an idea of what has taken place over the past few days insofar as the trial getting underway.”
Nate Carlisle
“I don’t think there’s been any discussion of Belize yet in the courtroom for the jury. They spent three days picking the jury, they had opening arguments on Thursday morning and I don’t recall Belize coming up. And then yesterday we had the trial’s first witness, a woman from the U.S. state of Indiana and she didn’t have any knowledge of Belize and it wasn’t even asked of her. So the jury has yet to hear anything about Belize.”
Isani Cayetano
“Give us an overall picture of what is taking place insofar as the Lev Dermen trial. I know that Jacob Kingston is one of perhaps several persons to take the stand to testify against him, but what are the attorneys are saying on either side of this argument?”
Nate Carlisle
“Well the trial isn’t over whether anyone bribed Mr. Saldivar. The trial is over whether Lev Dermen participated in a scheme to defraud the United States government from a biofuel tax credit and so we’re going to hear testimony about how this scheme was organized, about how money from the scheme was laundered to other countries, especially Turkey and Luxemburg. I think if Mr. Kingston does testify about any payments to John Saldivar it’s going to be in the context of how this scheme was organized. One of the elements is that Lev Dermen had a number of contacts in the United States government, in local governments here and even overseas and that one of those may have been John Saldivar.”
