BCSC-known Purdy's trial kicks off with guilty Jolliffe
2003-02-18 21:04 EST - Street Wire
by Stockwatch Miami correspondent
In the kickoff Bermuda Short money laundering trial in Miami Tuesday, it took just 75 minutes to cull 39 fine Floridians for the 12-person jury that will decide the fate of Howe Street promoter John (Jack) Purdy. Mr. Purdy was arrested last August in New York in Operation Bermuda Short, a money laundering sting featuring RCMP and FBI undercover officers posing as Colombian Cali cocaine cartel figures.
Co-defendants have been rolling over on Mr. Purdy, 52, and another one did so Tuesday. That was Harold Alfred Jolliffe, who pled guilty just before the trial started to a money-laundering conspiracy, and then became the first important witness against his old friend.
They are still friends. They greeted one another warmly after the jury left the room at the close of testimony and prosecutor Richard Hong finished his examination of the witness. The friendship will be tested again Wednesday morning when Mr. Purdy's lawyer, Neal Sonnett, cross-examines Mr. Jolliffe.
Prosecutor Richard Hong's questioning of Mr. Jolliffe was meant to show the jury -- seven women, five men and two alternates -- that Mr. Purdy did not hesitate to follow through on a deal with the undercover agents even after one of them pointedly informed him that they were asking him to run the proceeds of cocaine trafficking through the bank accounts of some of his businesses.
That revelation took place in Fort Lauderdale, on a yacht where Mr. Purdy met with the undercover agents. Mr. Hong described it in some detail during his opening statement, and told the jury that later in the trial a secretly-made videotape of the meeting would be played for them.
They will be able to follow the dialogue in a printed transcript that's roughly as thick as the Miami phone directory, one volume of white pages and two of yellow. It is a six-hour opus, which Mr. Hong said may bore the jury a little.
He foretold the use of vulgar language, too, and apologized for it in advance. "The defendant, Mr. Purdy, took the money -- cash -- that he knew to be drug proceeds," Mr. Hong said.
"There was one problem. The secret about Mr. Purdy and his co-defendant Kevan Garner is that they took the money from people who represented to Mr Purdy and Mr. Garner that they were dealing in drug money," the prosecutor told the jury.
"It just turned out that the six-hour coversation John Purdy had with two undercover agents on a boat in Fort Lauderdale happened to be on videotape."
Mr. Hong made the point that after an hour or so, Mr. Purdy said he wanted to know the source of the money he would be laundering. "The FBI undercover agent tells him point black, 'Jack, it's drug money.'"
That did not stop Mr. Purdy from continuing the discussion, according to the prosecutor. Mr. Hong told the jury that in fact, Mr. Purdy seemed to be in a state of denial, as if he did not know what was going on even though everyone else there did.
Mr. Sonnett, the defence lawyer, jumped on that when it was his turn to address the jury. Indeed, he declared, "Mr. Purdy never was in any kind of trouble until he was ensnared into this sting operation, until he was unduly and unfairly ensnared by these undercover agents."
Mr. Sonnett told the jury it was lucky that the entire meeting was videotaped, because that will work in his client's favour.
"What I want you to listen for is what you'll hear Jack Purdy say and what you'll hear the agents say. Everybody else in the room was a law enforcement undercover agent. Mr. Purdy was the only one who didn't know it was being recorded. If you listen to what Jack Purdy says, he can only be the victim, based on what he did and what he said -- not on what Mr. Garner did and said, because Mr Garner was doing his own thing," stated Mr. Sonnett.
"You're going to hear Jack Purdy, over and over and over again, telling these agents that he only wants to do business with legitimate businesses. You'll hear Jack Purdy say he was involved in an audit with Revenue Canada and he didn't want to deal with anything except legitimate business."
Mr. Jolliffe's testimony for the government came first, though, and it did not support his old friend, although it alone did not incriminate Mr. Purdy either.
Mr. Jolliffe told the jury that Tuesday was his 58th birthday. He was educated and worked as a professional forester until he became a partner in one of Mr. Purdy's businesses, Bolivian Hardwood Corp.
His job was travelling to Bolivia, buying lumber and shipping it to Canada for resale. For about a year now, Mr. Jolliffe has been out of that business and working as an excavation equipment operator for the city of Calgary.
"Bolivian Hardwood was always short of money," Mr. Jolliffe testified. "I never geot a salary from the company, and to my knowledge Jack never got a salary."
They fell in with the undercover federal agents, according to Mr. Jolliffe, because the wood venture needed cash to pay its bills in Bolivia and to stay in business while they sold their wood and waited for payment back in North America.
In the middle of July 2001, he said, he went to Fort Lauderdale for a meeting with a man he knew as Bill MacDonald. (This was the phony name of the undercover RCMP officer.)
"At that time, he called himself a facilitator," Mr. Jolliffe said, referring to the undercover agent. "Basically, he described himself as a person who put people who needed money together with people who had money ... today I know him as an FBI agent. He was an undercover agent."
"At this meeting I as introduced to Ricardo, a person who looked to me to be of Latin descent. Ricardo told me he had sums of money coming in on a very regular basis," testified Mr. Jolliffe.
Mr. Jolliffe said he was shown $50,000, contained in a backpack or handbag. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.)
"There were stacks of money, banded together. All cash. I got very nervous. I felt that it was illegal money."
Mr. Hong asked him why he thought that.
"Partly because it was cash," Mr. Jolliffe replied.
"Secondly, because of the way Ricardo and Bill made the prsentation. It just didn't look right. They wanted to pay for a shipment of wood from Bolivia to Canada. Once we received payment, the money would be returned to them through the Centrust Bank in Miami," Mr. Jolliffe told the court.
"Getting it into the banking system was what really scared me."
"You said no?" asked Mr. Hong, the prosecutor.
"I said no," replied the witness.
Mr. Jolliffe testified that eventually, a transaction did take place in Sepetember, 2001. Mr. Jolliffe said he picked up $130,000 in cash from Ricardo.
"Did you know it was drug money?" Mr. Hong asked.
"Yes I did," Mr. Jolliffe replied.
"Why did you take it?" asked the prosecutor.
"That's a real good question. I still haven't resolved it," replied Mr. Jolliffe.
Mr. Jolliffe told the court he guessed he did it in order to keep Bolivian Hardwood in business.
Then he had to get rid of the money.
"I drove around Miami for two days, depositing a goodly portion of that $130,000 in my account at Citibank, in amounts of less than $10,000 so they wouldn't be reported to the legal authorities." (Such deposits are called structuring transactions.)
In the United States, federal law requires financial institutions to report transactions of $10,000 or more. The law was designed to halt the laundering of money from narcotics trafficking through supposedly legitimate companies and the banking system.
"I think there were five or six different bank branches," Mr. Jolliffe testified.
"I think in total, I put in about $115,000."
He was to keep a percentage of the money to pay his expenses for travel to and from Bolivia.
Afterward, Mr. Jolliffe testified, he and Mr. Purdy had an in-person conversation followed by E-mail exchanges, but Mr. Purdy never raised any concerns about illegal money.
Mr. Jolliffe also talked to the RCMP agent by phone and E-mail.
Mr. Hong asked him if he ever had a discussion with Mr. Purdy regarding the RCMP agent Mr. McDonald and Ricardo.
Mr. Jolliffe remembered a phone call from Mr. Purdy, he thinks in February last year.
"Jack reported to me that he'd gone to Miami and met with Ricardo and Bill, and that Ricardo and Bill were extremely pleased with the way I had conducted business with them," he testified.
Mr. Hong asked him if Mr. Purdy ever advised him not to deal with those men because their money was drug money.
"No he did not," Mr. Jolliffe replied.
Mr. Hong also asked Mr. Jolliffe why he maintained contact with Mr. McDonald, the undercover RCMP officer, despite his own uneasiness about their transaction.
"There was still hope in my mind that Bill and some of his people would be able to invest in Bolivian Hardwood Corporation," he replied.
The trial continues. |
