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Prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office in Miami, Florida
recently dismissed, with prejudice, all money laundering, and
related charges, pending against the Venezuelan businessman,
Martin Lustgarten Acherman, in a case that should never been
filed at all. A fair reading of the court file indicates that Federal
prosecutors did not have any evidence against Mr. Lustgarten,
but filed an Indictment that alleged he was a central player in a
$40-$100m drug money laundering operation.
After his arrest, the Government succeeded in convincing a Federal
Judge in Boston, Massachusetts, where the case was initially filed,
that the defendant was a flight risk, although he resided in both Florida
and Panama, and had lived and worked in South Florida, for many years.
As the result, he was held in Pretrial Confinement for several months.
The Government had problems with the case early on; Venue, the right
to be tried where the alleged crime occurred, was improper in the District
of Massachusetts, and the Court transferred the action to the Southern
District of Florida, where some of the allegedly criminal transactions had
taken place.
Over a period of several months, and while Mr. Lustgarten was detained pre-trial, the Government attempted, repeatedly, to obtain evidence of money laundering
from overseas sources, and after it was unable to secure any, sought additional
time from the Court to do so, but admitted that it could not estimate how long
such action would take. Obviously, not only was there no evidence against
the defendant in hand, at the time of filing of the indictment, but subsequent
efforts to secure the same had failed.
Meanwhile, a defendant in custody deserves to have the evidence against him
presented , or the case dismissed , if Due Process is to be served.
At that point, the Government dismissed all the money laundering, and related charges, against Mr. Lustgarten. in what appears to be an effort to save face, the Government, having noted that the defendant had made a possibly unauthorized entry into the United States, in an earlier year, filed a misdemeanor charge, which he
agreed to plead to. The penalty was only a fine and not prison time, and there was no Supervised Release required to be served. Of course, he has spent several months
in custody, on charges that were later dismissed, basically for lack of evidence.
If there is a lesson here, it is that unless prosecutors have actual; evidence of a crime, for them to rush to indict an individual, betting that they will have it in hand shortly, supposing that such evidence exists, is fundamentally wrong. What if they
cannot secure such evidence timely, or even at all ? Justice is only served when
prosecutors proceed, if and only if they have the evidence to convict.
Written by Vladimir Viktor Feldman
Contributed by Andre Slavenkov
