The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamas-based financier’s “economic survival” is at stake, Tribune Business can reveal, after the Court of Appeal dismissed his applications for leave to appeal an $8 million default judgment against him.

Derek Guise Turner, the New Zealand-born financial trader who served 87 months in prison after pleading guilty to the US government’s wire fraud charges, had been attempting to overturn Supreme Court rulings in favour of his former Bahamian investors.

They include FNM deputy leader, Loretta Butler-Turner and her family, who have since received the more than-$8 million generated by selling off Mr Turner’s former Paradise Island and Bay Street properties.

Tribune Business can reveal that this sum was divided up among the former Bahamas-based investors in Mr Turner’s scheme within the last month, in accordance with an agreement reached among themselves.

The ‘division of the spoils’, this newspaper understands, also came after Justice Stephen Isaacs handed down a Distribution Order and this dismissal of Mr Turner’s appeal.

Tribune Business sources said these developments had stunned Mr Turner, who had been anticipating a successful challenge to the default judgments entered against him.

It is understood that the financier, who is living at Ocean Place on Cable Beach, opposite the residence of Prime Minister Perry Christie, is now seeking to resume his previous stock market trading activities in a bid to raise funds for compensating the many global investors who lost money in his earlier schemes.

However, court papers filed on Mr Turner’s behalf for the failed Appeal indicate that the first obstacle in his way might well be his own financial situation.

“The actions of the defendant, Derek Turner, manifest a burning desire to have his day in court,” said arguments filed in the Court of Appeal by his attorney, J. Michael Saunders.

“He wants, and we submit, that he deserves an opportunity to face these claimants in court and to examine the true nature of these claims.

“The defendant [Mr Turner] is fighting for his economic survival, as he stands to lose everything that he has worked for in the last four decades.”

The crux of Mr Turner’s appeal was that he was never properly served with the Bahamian legal proceedings while held in a New York federal prison.

He alleged that his New York and Sydney attorneys both denied being served with the Bahamian legal proceedings, as did his wife, Man Lin-Ing, who was a 50 per cent shareholder in his companies.

And, while his then-Bahamian attorney, Paul Knowles, had said the law firm of former FNM Cabinet minister, Carl Bethel, was instructed to appear on Mr Turner’s behalf, the financier alleged Bethel, Moss & Co ultimately ended up representing one of his accusers, investor Peter Davis.

“This is clearly a conflict that this court should not ignore or overlook,” Mr Turner’s pleadings alleged.

“The default judgments were only obtained because Mr Turner was detained in the US and was not in a position to resist the claims.”

But ultimately, none of this appeared to cut much ice with the Court of Appeal.

One source familiar with developments, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Tribune Business: “Mr Turner’s application for leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal the refusal to overturn the default judgment was dismissed.

“His last effort was dismissed by the Court of Appeal, and he made no application subsequent to that. That’s the end of the matter. The matter is finished.”

Tribune Business previously revealed that Mr Turner alleged he only pled guilty to fraud after being “terrified beyond measure by the barbaric conditions” that existed in his US prison.

Setting out his personal history, Mr Turner alleged that over-zealous regulation in Australia pushed him into emigrating to the Bahamas, and he began his ‘hedge fund trading’ activities from this nation in March 2000.

But he was detained by the US federal authorities in Long Island on April 16, 2005, over an alleged money laundering complaint.

After being denied bail “for a few months”, Mr Turner alleged that he was offered several plea bargain deals by the US government, which were initially all rejected.

“To this I responded with words: ‘Hell will freeze over before I ever consider that’,” Mr Turner alleged.

However, prison conditions were soon to change his mind. “I was transferred to Nassau County jail, which is one of the worst county jails in America,” Mr Turner claimed in his affidavit.

“I was terrified beyond measure at being held in this particular jail, which was a horrifying experience for me.”

He alleged that “hardened criminals” had “repeatedly threatened to rape and kill me if I did not pay them, four individuals” sums ranging from $16,000 to $26,000.

Arguing that jail records would back up his assertions, Mr Turner alleged: “I was beyond terrified by the sub-culture that I existed in.

“On one particular evening an inmate jumped over the upstairs tier railings with a sheet around his neck and killed himself diagonally to my cell.

“The next day, a serious fight broke out between the rival gangs held on my floor, being the MS-13s, the Crips and the Bloods. As a result of this fight, there was blood everywhere.”

This wore down Mr Turner’s resistance, and offered a wire fraud plea bargain - amid warnings he was looking at a two-three year jail sentence - he took it,

“I was beside myself for such terrifying words,” he alleged. “If I executed this plea agreement I would be able to go home within a matter of months.

“The dream of going home, and getting away from the barbaric conditions upon which I was forced to live, overwhelmed me to sign the plea agreement for three counts of wire fraud.”