REPRESENTATIVE Stanley T. Torres “hit the target” on his recent privilege speech when he named former House Speaker Benigno R. Fitial, the Calvos and attorney David Lujan as the “greedy shareholders and directors” of Bank of Saipan, according to DuSean Berkich, one of the four individuals indicted for defrauding the bank.
“You were certainly on the right track when you commenced your privilege speech,” he told Torres in a recent letter. “Sir, I respectfully urge you to follow the money in this case, just as Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein in the Watergate scandal. If you do, I believe the Lujan and the Calvos (answering) for their actions will succeed and you will do the commonwealth a great service in bringing these men to justice.”
But Berkich wants Torres, R-Saipan, to drop his name from the three “BMW crooks”—which the lawmaker said included Bert Montgomery and Michael Wilson—who defrauded the bank of $6.6 million.
“But then you called me one of the BMW crooks. That’s where you were wrong. Crooks, sir, are people who steal other people’s money or property. I stole nothing from no one. Money was loaned, not stolen. The loan is collateralized. The loan went to an attorney’s trust account and was used to acquire interests in established companies,” said Berkich in a letter he addressed to the lawmaker but coursed through Marianas Cable Vision.
He said Torres made accusations in his speech that “were based upon false assumptions.”
“After reading the…newspapers…I can see why. I’ve been wrongly accused, tried and convicted in the press, as you will learn from the trial. Your sources are wrong, so understandably, your accusations are too,” Berkich told Torres.
Berkich claimed that the grand jury “elected not to hear one word of testimony” and “accepted (allegations) as facts” and indicted him. He said the grand jury “failed to do its duty” on preventing the indictment of innocent persons.
This, he said, “will be demonstrated conclusively” at his trial.
In the same letter, Berkich told Torres that Lujan and the Calvos denied verbally and in writing to the banking commissioner that a sale of their shares had occurred “despite the fact that their shares were fully paid for and a new share certificate was properly issued to Montgomery,” the approved majority shareholder who was “barred from attending the annual shareholders’ meeting.”
Berkich further claimed that Lujan threatened him and Montgomery with going to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and filing charges based upon the “misinformation” provided by Fitial.
“So (Tomas B.) Aldan, Montgomery and I are now under federal indictments, while Lujan and the Calvos are enjoying the use of Montgomery’s money and they represent themselves still to be the owners of the shares they sold to Montgomery,” he said.
He also informed Torres that a shareholder of any corporation cannot accept payment for his shares, deliver his certificate to the corporate office or the office of the corporation’s counsel, then keep the money and retain the shares.
He alleged that there was a conspiracy to defraud Montgomery.
Otherwise, he added, “Lujan as an attorney would have required (his) cohorts to join him in placing the funds (Montgomery) paid them into an escrow account. But he did no such thing. Montgomery brought $3.2 million of the funds paid to Lujan and the Calvos into the bank from other sources,” Berkich told Torres.
