http://www.lucompublicdocuments.com/DBreview_4_20_2010.html
In the past four years, Boca Raton attorney Richard Lehman has been thrown in a Panamanian jail, put on Interpol’s highest red flag status, sued in both Panama and in the United States and slapped with a nearly $2 million judgment. He responded by filing a complaint with the Organization of American States, accusing the government and courts of Panama of widespread corruption.
He says he barely kept his tax law practice alive.
Lehman, executor of Wilson Lucom’s estate, said it’s all because he’s been trying to carry out the wishes of his longtime client and friend, an eccentric millionaire who died in Panama in 2006 and wanted his beachfront land worth $50 million to go to the poor children of his adopted country.
If it sounds like a movie script, it’s that, too. Screenwriter David Griffiths, who co-wrote “Collateral Damage” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, is writing a screenplay based on Lehman’s experience.
“What’s happened to Richard is outrageous,” Griffiths said. “He’s been hugely heroic.”
Lucom was an ardent anti-communist, conservative activist and co-founder of the media watchdog group Accuracy in Media. He’d served in the Truman and Roosevelt administrations.
Twice he married into wealth. He was first wed to the heiress to the Willys Jeep fortune, Virginia Willys de Landa. After she died, he sold a massive tract of land in Palm Beach County for $10 million that became Greenacres.
In 1982, Lucom wed Hilda Arias, former wife of Panama’s minister of finance.
Lehman has been battling Lucom’s widow, Hilda, a powerful relative of former Panamanian presidents whose family owns one of the country’s biggest newspapers. The widow and her attorneys claim Wilson Lucom’s will was not properly executed. They went as far as asking Panamanian authorities to bring manslaughter charges against Lehman and others in connection with Lucom’s death. Lehman and his attorneys called the charges ridiculous, and Panama’s attorney general dismissed them with prejudice.
Web Extra: |
“My lawyer stayed with me, outside the jail, the whole time,” Lehman said. “He said he was afraid I would disappear otherwise.”
Later, Lehman and his Panamanian lawyer, Victor Crosbie, mysteriously wound up on the Interpol red flag alert — the highest warning for criminals and terrorists sent to 183 countries — and his lawyer was subsequently arrested.
As if the saga wasn’t dramatic enough, a human rights activist who organized a march to protest the delay in transferring Lucom’s gift to the poor was shot and wounded. The activist claims the shooting was tied to his protests.
Well-litigated
Lawsuits and orders in the case, accusing parties of slander, murder, theft, misrepresentation and a variety of other charges, have flown back and forth, reaching the Panama Supreme Court.
The case made it to the United States when one of Hilda Lucom’s attorneys, Charles Weiss of Palm Beach Gardens, filed a suit in Palm Beach County Circuit Court to block Lehman’s appointment as personal representative of Lucom and to declare his use of $600,000 in Lucom’s U.S. bank accounts unlawful.
Judge John Phillips ruled in March 2009 after a jury trial that Lehman lacked authority to spend the $600,000 and that he had failed to set up a trust account and commingled funds. The judge ordered the money to be returned with attorney fees. Weiss said he is still trying to collect a $1.9 million judgment against Lehman.
In a scathing order, Phillips labeled Lehman a “covetous opportunist seeking personal advantage and control of assets in the $25 [million] to $50 million domiciliary estate.”
Lehman hired appellate lawyers Arthur England of Greenberg Traurig and Bruce Rogow, special counsel with Alters Boldt Brown Rash & Culmo, to defend him. England filed a motion to overturn the verdict based on the reversal of a key Panamanian ruling. If the motion fails, Lehman will appeal to the 4th District Court of Appeal.
Asked his opinion about how Lehman was treated in Panama, England said dryly: “We’re fortunate we live in a country where attorneys are not thrown in jail for their status as personal representative. That country’s judicial system is out of sync with what I’m used to.”
Not the hero?
But Weiss said Lehman is not the hero he paints himself to be. He accuses Lehman of rushing to drain Lucom’s Palm Beach account right after his death and misrepresenting facts to the judge.
“He talks about the poor children of Panama. Well, when presented with all the facts, people will come to the conclusion the judge did,” Weiss said.
But others call Lehman heroic and commend him for all he has endured over the past four years. Griffiths has spent two years researching the film and traveling to Panama numerous times. His working title is “The Poor Children of Panama.”
“What’s happened to Richard is outrageous,” Griffiths said. “It’s a very corrupt world there. We have to wait until the end to see what happens — and see if any of the kids see any of that money.”
Lehman hopes the end is in sight. In an attempt to wash his hands of the matter, he formally turned over a 7,000-acre former ranch to a charity, the Fundacion De Apoyo a Los Niños Pobres de Panama, and the government of Panama.
The charity was organized to receive Lucom’s money along with the Panamanian Ministry for Social Development, which is responsible for feeding the poor, in the form of an irrevocable commitment.
In a letter to the agencies, Lehman stated: “Even though I had all the legal authority I needed under the law in Panama, I have not been permitted to distribute one penny to Panama’s poor children for four years. All of it as a result of judicial corruption, and it continues now to illegally prevent me from carrying out Wilson Lucom’s written intentions.
“I am told that every three days in Panama, one child dies of malnutrition-related diseases. Lucom’s gift would have stopped this four years ago if Panama law had been allowed to prevail.”
Julie Kay can be reached at (305) 347-6685.
No comments:
Post a Comment