MIAMI_The release of the Panama Papers exposed an elaborate kickback scheme whose tentacles spread from the Caribbean island of Aruba to warehouses in Doral to the offshore banking haven of Panama City, according to a lawsuit filed in Miami federal court.
The scam was allegedly hatched by Egbert Koolman, an employee of Aruba's state-owned telecommunications provider, Setar. Koolman's job was to buy phones from suppliers around the world for Setar to sell to consumers. But his former company says Koolman defrauded the firm of "tens of millions" of dollars by accepting kickbacks from South Florida-based mobile phone suppliers that were awarded contracts at inflated prices.
Now Setar is suing Koolman, his ex-wife and the company's former suppliers for millions in damages, asserting bribery, bid-rigging, fraud and racketeering violations.
In addition, some of the phones bought by Koolman were faulty and included built-in "pornography applications," much to the embarrassment of his employer, the lawsuit states.
Setar only discovered the suspected fraud when Koolman's name popped up in a list of offshore company owners published online as part of the Panama Papers expose, according to the suit. The leak of 11.5 million secret documents from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca laid bare a parallel offshore financial system accessible only to the rich and well-connected _ one that is shockingly easy for fraudsters to abuse, anti-corruption experts say.
And documents included in the Panama Papers database _ shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with the Miami Herald and its parent company, McClatchy _ show Koolman set up an anonymous offshore company in the British Virgin Islands and used it to open two bank accounts in Panama. The lawsuit accuses Koolman of routing the stolen money through his offshore firm and spending it on renovations for his house in Aruba, including pool repairs and solar panels. Other funds were used to buy his son a pickup truck and pay rent and other expenses for his former mistress, the lawsuit claims.
Setar fired him last August.
But far from openly enjoying the fruits of his alleged corruption, Koolman now lives in a modest home in working-class Hialeah. No Florida properties or companies are registered in his name.
Koolman did not respond to a message left Friday at his Hialeah home, which he shares with a female companion. He has not yet retained an attorney, federal court records show.
Setar's attorney credited the Panama Papers with outing the former Setar products manager.
"The strong evidence in this case indicates that Mr. Koolman, along with his many co-conspirators, bilked our client _ and really the Aruban people _ out of millions of dollars for more than a decade," said Setar's Miami-based attorney, Benton Curtis, with the law firm Broad and Cassel.
"This should be a clear call to corporations operating in these regions (South Florida to the Caribbean and Latin America) to take a much harder look at their records and institutional controls so that they too are not victimized by cavalier employees," Curtis said. "Amazingly, were it not for the recent Panama Papers disclosure, this illicit conduct could have continued on unchecked indefinitely."
