PHILIPSBURG--Ruddemiro D. Dorothea on Thursday appealed his conviction of laundering some US $80,000, for which the Court of First Instance sentenced him in September 2015 to six months.
The Court also confiscated 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.
When a Customs officer asked Dorothea 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 lottery ticket from Joe Black 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 Court sentenced Dorothea for money-laundering and for violation of currency regulations which oblige travellers to declare the import or export of money exceeding NAf. 20,000 or its equivalent.
Solicitor-General Anton van der Schans said Thursday he was of the opinion that the defendant had tried “to pollute the legal economy with illegal money,” and called upon the Court of Appeals to uphold the verdict.
On behalf of her client, who was not present for his retrial, attorney Sjamira Roseburg said he contested his conviction. She pleaded for acquittal as her client had provided evidence to sustain his claim that he had actually won a big prize in the lottery. “My client wanted to invest the money in a car rental company,” the lawyer said.
The high-voltage technician claimed he had purchased the ticket in an illegal lottery. This would make it virtually impossible to verify the correctness of his statements, the Solicitor-General said in response to questions posed by the Appeals Court concerning the possibilities of an investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office into the sale of illegal lottery tickets in Curaçao.
After a brief recess, the three-judge panel of the Appeals Court stated it would make little sense to give the Prosecutor’s Office such a “virtually impossible” task. The Court will render its verdict in this case February 17.
