Attorney Bruce Jorgensen, who is representing “John Doe” and “Jane Roe,” said, “Not a penny has been paid to the Fund.”
He added, “Not a finger has been lifted, by defense counsel, to effect timely, meaningful, payment or collection via judicial enforcement of the judgment.”
During the past 22 months, Jorgensen said “realization has transpired that payment of the $230 million judgment issued on June 29, 2009 has…been deemed neither fiscally palatable nor politically expedient by either those public officials entrusted with utmost fiduciary obligations respecting judgment debtor CNMI government, or those bearing utmost fiduciary responsibility to first and foremost protect the viability of the…Retirement Fund in tandem with Fund assets.”
Jorgensen said “Fund assets…have been regularly tapped to pay lavish amounts in compensation to Fund counsel, to finance skyrocketing Fund administrative costs, and for such incidentals as underwriting wholly biased electoral campaigns promoted by the CNMI administration including the failed CNMI pension obligation bond initiative.”
According to the lawyer, “The Fund’s economic collapse has rapidly escalated towards utter, irreparable, financial disaster to plaintiffs, similarly situated beneficiaries, and others.”
Jorgensen said attorney Viola Alepuyo, the counsel for the Retirement Fund, was paid by Fund assets by about $332,837 for 17 months between July 8, 2009 and Dec. 3, 2010.
“Amid their utter failure to enforce the judgment two years ago, defense counsels representing the Fund have themselves been enriched via the very Fund assets they have been tasked to collect, protect, and preserve,” according to Jorgensen.
Variety tried but failed to get a comment from Alepuyo.
Jorgensen also cited conflict of interest among some attorneys who are “recipients of Fund payments and/or non-monetary compensation, like Deborah Fisher, her husband and law partner Braddock Huesman, and multiple Fund ‘in-house’ attorneys.”
Jorgensen said Fisher represented the judgment creditor while her husband, Huesman, represented the CNMI judgment debtor.
When Huesman became Fisher’s law partner, Jorgensen said, “she in turn provided hourly and now full time representation, at $120,000 annually, to the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. — a multi-million-dollar Fund debtor.”
Variety tried but failed to get a comment from Fisher.
Huesman, for his part, told the Variety that Jorgensen’s statements were “demonstrably false.”
Jorgensen said “perhaps least astonishing but most telling” was the CNMI government’s “newfound” assertion that the $230 million judgment is “neither final, nor enforceable with the CNMI judiciary —while, in the process, tacitly acknowledging this federal court’s authority to enforce the judgment under federal law.”
Jorgensen also cited the following recent disclosures:
• Fund assets will total only $10 million by the year 2016, with assets at their lower level in the past 10 years.
• Fund officials project an $8 million shortfall in pension payouts by Oct. 2011.
• CNMI officials continue to defy both the law and CNMI Superior Court orders for the continued failure to remit employer’s contributions to the Fund, totaling $5.7 million over 12 pay periods through March 12, 2011.
• Over $250 million remained outstanding from the CNMI as of Feb. 2011.
• The unfunded liability of the fund was $619.7 million as of Feb. 28, 2011.
Then-Chief Federal Judge Alex R. Munson ordered a 60-day stay on all motions that Jorgensen filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands on behalf of anonymous retirees who want the Retirement Fund placed under federal receivership.
Jorgensen filed the case against Gov. Benigno R. Fitial and officials of the Retirement Fund in their official capacities.
