PHILIPSBURG--Ruddemiro D. Dorothea unsuccessfully appealed his conviction of laundering some US $80,230, for which the Court of First Instance had sentenced him in September 2015, to six months. The Appeals Court announced Wednesday; it would uphold the six-month verdict.
The Court of First Instance had ordered the confiscation of the money the defendant had on him on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2015, when he was about to travel from St. Maarten to Curaçao, where he lives.
When a Customs Officer asked Dorothea (43) whether he was carrying cash in his luggage, he denied this, but when his bag was searched a large number of banknotes in various denominations were found.
Asked about the origin of the money, Dorothea claimed he had won it as a prize after buying a winning ticket in an illegal lottery in Curaçao.
The Court, however, did not accept this explanation as the defendant could not provide any hard evidence to sustain this claim, and found it proven that the money was made by criminal activities.
The three-judge panel rejected the defendant’s statement because the proceeds of an illegal lottery cannot not be traced; therefore, the suspect’s defence was dismissed as being “unacceptable and unverifiable.”
The Court convicted Dorothea of money-laundering and of violation of currency regulations which oblige travellers to declare the import or export of money exceeding NAf. 20,000 or its equivalent.
