letters
Only a few letters this time
Amazing argument
San Cristobal Land Development lawyer Barry Miller's response to articles published last April and May is truly amazing. It might even surpass the classic definition of the Yiddish word "chutzpah," the case of the son who kills his parents and then pleads for mercy from the court because he's an orphan.
If you look at the San Cristobal website, they claim to own much more land than Miller states in his letter. Miller admits that they don't have title to most of this land, but only possessory rights or land contract interests. Well, fine, EXCEPT that one of the major sales pitches that San Cristobal has always made is that buying one of their farms allows a foreign citizen to get a reforestation visa, and you need TITLE, not possesory rights or a land contract, to get one of those.
If San Cristobal was serious about its claims of a 20 to 30 percent annual return on investment from teak and noni farming, it should show long-term commodity price histories to support that claim. It can't because noni is a recent fad and because there is no history of successful teak production in Bocas del Toro. It also can't because such long-range predictions of commodity prices are about as accurate as bets on a slot machine.
Miller criticizes Okke Ornstein for failing to report that San Cristobal has hired a company to do reforestation with more than just teak and noni. However, by comparing the dates of those stories with the dates of press releases on San Cristobal's website, you will find that the contract Miller points out happened AFTER the articles were published, maybe as a result of it.
Miller defends San Cristobal's recruitment of thugs as something that everybody does, and implies that most people in Bocas have had scrapes with the law. What an insult to Bocas, and what a cavalier response from a company that had a fugitive from foreign pedophilia charges and a Florida parole jumper with a violent history on its payroll. Also, he doesn't deny that criminal charges were filed against San Cristobal's Tom McMurrain in the Atlanta area, but just denigrates those charges.
Finally, just like in San Cristobal's criminal libel complaint against Okke Ornstein and Eric Jackson, Miller blames The Panama News for things that were published in El Siglo. By convincing the Public Ministry to take this novel legal theory to court, San Cristobal has earned its place alongside people like Manuel Antonio Noriega in the annals of Panamanian repression against freedom of the press.
It's all very unconvincing. This may be why hardly any Bocas businesses will have anything to do with Mr. McMurrain's association, and why most of the Americans in Bocas avoid the San Cristobal people.
Ornstein replies to Miller's and Marchant's letters
In the last issue of The Panama News I found an interesting collection of letters about two articles I wrote about San Cristobal and its owner Tom McMurrain. I'm happy to read that Mrs. Keipper saw her land cleared and planted, although she has yet to receive title --- even though that was promised to her more than a year ago by San Cristobal. David Marchant, well, he is after all the village idiot of financial journalism, and it is really no surprise that the writer of a newsletter for outfits like "Bank Crozier" (closed down amidst allegations of fraud) teams up with yet another group of gangsters and can't get it right again. I never operated a teak investment company and the activities of the Tulip Fund had been terminated long before I wrote the articles about San Cristobal.
The articles appeared in May 2003, yet it took Barry Miller, one of San Cristobal's principals, almost 10 months to come up with a reply other than threats, harassment and criminal lawsuits.
Let's get to the facts.
One. It appears that San Cristobal has made some effort to clear and plant the plantations they sold and to obtain titles, after the two articles about them appeared in The Panama News. I never denied that, I never even published that this would not be true.The articles stated that San Cristobal was lying to clients about the status of their land and titles, and that was very much true at that time. I obtained an enormous amount of internal correspondence proving this, they literally told clients that their land was cleared, planted and had title while this was simply not true. Barry Miller himself wrote in an email to the sales director that "there are no titles and there are no surveys and you know it." They claimed they were already selling noni at ridiculous prices, which was simply not true. They said that ANAM had already issued reforestation certificates, and that was again not true. "Your plantation looks like a garden paradise," they wrote to clients, while in reality nothing had been done on that piece of land. They couldn't even tell who owned what. Clients' money held in escrow disappeared. The head of land management admitted to a client that teak does not grow well in Bocas. It was only after I exposed these lies in my articles that San Cristobal started paying attention to these issues. We only have Miller's word on the current status and some documents. Mrs. Keipper, who was one of the early clients of San Cristobal, still has no title on her land. Go figure. Miller tries to hide behind the unfamiliarity of the US principals with Panamanian laws and customs, yet he himself has been working for a Panamanian law firm for years before San Cristobal started. And how should we trust an investment company that is unfamiliar with the laws of the country where they operate?
No word from Miller either about reforestation visas, even though another principal of San Cristobal claimed in April 2003 to me that they had obtained reforestation certificates from ANAM. The truth is that it is highly unlikely that ANAM will approve the activities of San Cristobal. One reason is that they are cutting cacao trees to plant teak (and some other) trees, which has of course nothing to do with reforestation.
Two. The fact that arrest warrants are not in the LEIN database does not prove that they do not exist. All it proves is that they're not in that database. There are other databases where warrants are or are not listed. The bottom line is that these warrants, issued for Tom McMurrain for theft by conversion, do exist, they're valid, and they are only given to law enforcement officials of the jurisdiction where McMurrain currently is. Anyone with a phone can check that for himself by calling the warrant office of Fulton County, Atlanta, Georgia. No matter how McMurrain, Miller or Marchant want to spin it, an arrest warrant means that the authorities want someone arrested on suspicion of crimes committed, period. Furthermore, the FBI in Atlanta took the case serious enough to start an investigation, which is still ongoing. Someone who is to be arrested but avoids that, is commonly called a fugitive, especially when residing in another jurisdiction. There is really no misunderstanding about that.
I wasn't very happy with the way Eric Jackson handled this particular issue, however, I understand from recent events that he is still victim of legal threats by San Cristobal, so I guess I owe him an apology for some of my earlier statements to him.
Three. McMurrain isn't the only fugitive connected with San Cristobal, there is a whole bunch of them. It started with their Sales Director, Ian Calvert Bleasdale, a fraudster and child rapist, who is now residing in a Costa Rican prison awaiting trial. Then we had Todd de Arriba, convicted and wanted in Florida for various crimes, some of them violent. And of course we have "Dr. Leonard Adams," whose real name is Homer Forster, who was recently arrested in Dubai for fraud, and who served as a legal advisor for San Cristobal. "We didn't know," is the reply of San Cristobal in all these cases, but as the numbers grow this is increasingly hard to believe. After all, the author was able to find out about all these cases with extremely limited resources, and why a multimillion dollar company like San Cristobal would be unable to at least verify the identity of its employees and associates has yet to be explained.
Four. Barry Miller claims they're not gangsters. Four fugitives are working for or connected with San Cristobal, but they're not gangsters. Bocas employees are described by the Bocas police as violent, the police report tells us how they drive around in a San Cristobal car selling drugs, some have been involved in illegal arms sales, but Miller says they're not gangsters. One of these goons threatened a Canadian source in front of several witnesses in a restaurant, that he will be shot in the head if he doesn't leave the country, but they're not gangsters (by the way, the source asked me to come with him to the police and a number of other officials, not the other way around as Miller claims). The same goons follow me around in the streets of Panama, one director of San Cristobal starts sending (death) threats by email, another goon threatens an El Siglo journalist that "something might happen to you" if she continues to publish about San Cristobal, and Barry Miller says they're not gangsters. And it gets better. San Cristobal files a criminal defamation complaint using Noriega's gag laws, and starts a campaign with their lawyer stating in the papers that I should be kicked out of the country, or at least thrown in jail for publishing the truth about his clients. All this, no doubt, is within the boundaries of Miller's concept of "civilized," which in reality makes them just what they are: a bunch of gangsters.
I will continue to report about San Cristobal and its principals should there be news about them. And maybe this is a good time and place to reveal that I have been asked to produce a radio documentary about San Cristobal and the way they use the military dictatorship's laws seeking protection for their fraudulent activities in real estate and reforestation. That documentary may very well contain excerpts from meetings with Barry Miller which I recorded, and that paints a completely different picture from what he's trying to make us believe in his letter to the editor.
Should we teach them the Koran?
When I was a boy, I saw another boy stealing a knife, and making the comment "God helps those who help themselves." This was an example of someone using a superficial view of religion to excuse their own wrong actions. The Koran is very complicated. It has millions of different view points. Those most expert on the Koran have written many objective explanations of it. We can communicate a taping of these objective explanations to those who are using a superficial view of it, to excuse their own wrong actions. Listening to the tape of the teachings of the Koran may help them stop opposing the love of God on earth, and instead help them build this love up.
Robert W. Carlson
Elgin, Illinois
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