7 News Belize

Dean Fuller's Millions Remain on Ice
posted (November 17, 2009)

In August, the Financial Intelligence Unit got a court order to freeze all bank accounts connected to dean fuller and his various companies, principally omni networks and Fultec Systems. That’s a total of 24 different bank accounts spread across five different banks – and according to the FIU, the total deposits amount to millions of dollars.

The freeze was requested because the FIU believed that monies in those accounts were “tainted due to money laundering.” The taint, argues the FIU came from Omni’s Business relationship with Money Exchange International Limited, the parent company for the Moneygram Agency run by the Coye family. Fuller was the Managing Director for Omni which was the master agent for Moneygram in Belize.

But Fuller said there was no taint, the FIU had it all wrong and instead of banking millions of dollars in commission receipts, he claimed that omni actually lost money on the Moneygram Agency. And that’s why Fuller secured attorneys Eamon Courtenay and Ashanti Arthurs martin to ask the Supreme Court to lift the freeze on his 24 accounts. They presented arguments to the court that eight point three million dollars that was deposited in a single account at the Belize Bank in 2007 was not the result of money generated from Moneygram.

Justice Oswell Legall considered arguments from both sides, with the FIU represented by Antoinette Moore, Tricia Pitts Anderson and Mikhail Argüelles. In a judgment issued this afternoon, Justice Legall rejected the arguments made by Fuller’s attorneys. He found that, “there is a reasonable cause to believe...that the accounts in the banks are tainted in relation to the offence of money laundering and that a forfeited order may be made in respect of the moneys in the accounts, if there is a conviction in the criminal charges.”

With that finding, the court extended the freezing of all accounts associated with Fuller, Omni and Fultec Systems, with the exception of two accounts containing funds belonging to Fuller’s mother. The court also permitted Fuller to make withdrawals of eight thousand dollars monthly from one account to cover living expenses.

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