Jorgensen recommended William J. Plum as the temporary or permanent receiver of the Fund.
“Mr. Plum has consented to serve as temporary receiver and/or permanent receiver respecting the Fund and in the event such appointment transpires, to travel to the CNMI and remain there for the purpose of transacting receivership duties as those arise,” Jorgensen said in his motion to the federal court.
According to Jorgensen, Plum brings with him decades of experience as an attorney, more than 20 years of which were spent in Hawaii.
Plum is an expert in business/landlord-tenant/ realty litigation and collection of debts.
He co-authored the 1997, 2002 and 2006 Hawaii State Bar Association Continuing Legal Education’s Hawaii Collection Law Manual and is a member of the Hawaii Judiciary’s District Court Rules Committee, as well as mediator on the U.S. Bankruptcy Mediation Panel of the District of Hawaii.
Jorgensen said his co-counsel in the case, Timothy R. Lord of California, is also ready to recommend temporary receivers if Plum’s nomination is not accepted.
Jorgensen and Lord argued the appointment of a temporary receiver for the Retirement Fund is necessary because the agency is packed with political appointees of Gov. Benigno R. Fitial.
The lawyers said CNMI officials have diverted and utilized Fund assets for governmental, personal and or political objectives and gains.
“While a history of blithe and/or blind CNMI passivity — adherence to unlawful CNMI legislation/governmental enactments, ignoring and circumventing laws on the books and/or unwillingness to challenge implementation of others — is perhaps not new, there is no question that similar events have now resulted in the Fund’s assets, liquidity, financial standing, business reputation, economic health, and overall viability being substantially and rapidly dissipated, diluted, deteriorated and squandered,” the two lawyers said.
They said there appears to be an institutional conflict in the case involving even those from the local judiciary.
“Current CNMI judges and justices are tasked of necessity with adjudging their own retirement futures. Former CNMI judges, receiving substantial Fund benefits — reportedly in the six-figure range — meanwhile appear, from plaintiffs’ vantage, to have been quite disinclined to rock the boat. And whether retirement deductions withheld from CNMI judiciary employees have themselves been remitted to the Fund, remains at present an open question, to plaintiffs,” they said.
Jorgensen and Lord also want to know who legally represents the Fund.
They said they were told that Fund in-house counsel James Hollman is on-leave until Jan. 2010.
Board counsel Viola Alepuyo has also professed to be unable to accept the first amended complaint.
