| SIPT to investigate lawyers in stamp duty cases | | Print | |
| Written by Richard Green/richard@fptci.com | |||
| Friday, 02 September 2011 10:05 | |||
 Attorney General Huw Shepheard has asked the Special Investigation and Prosecution Team to find out if Turks and Caicos Island lawyers have been illegally arranging land sales to underpay stamp duty owed to the government. Shepheard made the request after Supreme Court Justice G.W. Martin ruled in June that two companies involved in the 2006 sale of Emerald Cay avoided more than $1 million in stamp duty in “a carefully crafted scheme of tax evasion” he said would not have been possible without the assistance of attorneys.The judge asked the attorney general to investigate the transaction to see if a formal complaint should be made against lawyers under the Legal Profession Ordinance. Because stamp duty is a major source of government revenue, Shepheard said he also wants “to establish whether the practice of deliberate underpayment has prevailed more widely throughout the TCI and if so, whether there is evidence of the commission of criminal offences.” Shepheard said the investigation will require more expertise than TCI police possess, so he referred the matter to the SIPT, which has been investigating allegations of corruption in former governments and other matters for nearly two years now. The request shouldn’t require much increase in the SIPT staff or slow down its main investigation, Shepard added. American billionaire Timothy Blixseth, who bought the property for $28 million, denies any wrongdoing in the transaction, his lawyer Michael Flynn says he was an innocent victim of “the corrupt government of (former premier) Michael Misick and the seller of the property.” Blixseth is suing the seller of the property, Gary di Silvestri, and others in U.S. federal court in Miami for nearly $10 million in damages. He also is fighting the government’s claim for $7 million in damages in the transaction. Photo: Emerald Cay
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