ATLANTA (CN) — An attorney for a Venezuelan billionaire with alleged cartel ties asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday to overturn a Florida federal judge’s demand that the billionaire pay $53 million to victims of a Colombian terrorist kidnapping.
Samark Jose Lopez Bello, a fugitive whose capture for crimes against the United States comes with a $5 million reward, has challenged the seizure of his properties and the garnishment of his bank accounts under a $318 million judgment against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The paramilitary group was sued in 2013 by the four surviving victims of a 2003 kidnapping.
In April 2020, a Florida federal judge ordered that Lopez Bello’s accounts at five banks be garnished and his waterfront Miami property sold.
During oral arguments conducted via Zoom, an attorney for Lopez Bello told a three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based appeals court that the lower court made a mistake when it ruled that his client is “an agent or instrumentality” of the FARC.
In a ruling adopted by U.S. District Judge Robert Scola, Jr., U.S. Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres determined in March 2020 that Lopez Bello’s assets can be used to satisfy the outstanding $300 million balance on the judgment against the FARC. Although Lopez Bello has not been directly linked to FARC forces, Torres determined that Lopez Bello is indirectly connected to the group through his association with Tareck Zaidan El Aissami Maddah, Venezuela’s Minister of Industries.
El Aissami is allegedly affiliated with the Cartel of the Suns, which traffics cocaine manufactured and produced by the FARC.
Summing up Lopez Bello’s arguments against the judgment, Obama-appointed U.S. Circuit Judge Adalberto Jordan explained, “Lopez Bello says the evidence against him involved an inferential and circumstantial chain. … In [Lopez Bello’s] view it is a very big, inferential line of causation.”
Arguing on behalf of the plaintiffs, Miami attorney Richard Rosenthal said the connection was much more direct. Rosenthal told the panel that witnesses testified that Lopez Bello himself is a member of the cartel.
Attorney Adam Fels, of Fridman Fels & Soto, said Rosenthal’s is based on hearsay. He cautioned the panel that making a finding supporting the use of “multiple indirect chains” to reach conclusions about Lopez Bello could have undesirable consequences.
“You’re going to be removing the predictability and security that have drawn foreign investments to this country. Banks who happen to have their accounts blocked by [the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control] for any reason, often with little to no concrete evidence, can have millions taken away by a creative plaintiff who can connect one account holder to another, to another individual, to a terrorist organization,” Fels said. “And knowing your client is one thing but you cannot possibly have the foresight to know what’s happening several chain-links down the road.”
Fels also argued that there are issues of fact remaining in the case which entitle Lopez Bello to a jury trial under Florida law. The attorney said the 11th Circuit should reverse the district court’s findings because the issue of whether a judgment should be entered against his client is better left up to a jury.
“There should have been at least, at minimum, a trial,” Fels said, adding that an evidentiary hearing held in the case was not “sufficient due process.”
Fels said there were “credibility issues” surrounding the evidence presented at the hearing, including “issues about whether reports were plagiarized” and “serious issues about the basis that [experts] had to testify.”
The attorney argued that Lopez Bello “provided a conclusive affidavit” which disputed every allegation against him and was “the only person who testified from personal knowledge.”
According to Torres’ report for the district court, Lopez Bello said in the affidavit that neither he nor any of the companies he was affiliated with supported the FARC financially or logistically. Another declaration by Lopez Bello denied that he has any association with the Cartel of the Suns, is not involved in narcotics drug trafficking and has never laundered drug money for El Aissami.
Jordan and U.S. Circuit Judge William Pryor, a George W. Bush appointee, peppered Fels with questions about whether the affidavit submitted by Lopez Bello, who did not appear in court, had “enough non-conclusory assertions of fact to create a genuine issue” which would support the request for a jury trial.
“Here’s one problem I have,” Pryor said. “The district court said this affidavit was conclusory, but Mr. Bello averred that he’s never been involved with narcotics drug tracking and he’s not been a front man for El Aissami and he’s not a member of the Cartel of the Suns and that he’s never laundered drug proceeds for El Aissami. Aren’t those all assertions of facts that create a genuine issue?”
But Rosenthal disagreed, saying he believed those statements are conclusions rather than factual claims.
“The affidavit didn’t give any factual basis. It just came to the legal conclusion that I’m not laundering his proceeds, I’m not involved with him," Rosenthal said.
Pryor pushed back, asking: “How else does he deny what’s been alleged against him?”
Rosenthal countered that Lopez Bello has options: he can provide facts about his relationship with El Aissami or have a forensic audit done to explain what his business does and show how he became a billionaire.
Asked by a laughing Pryor whether Lopez Bello would ever appear live in court, Fels demurred, saying, “We don’t know. It’s possible he may. He might make that decision.”
Pryor and Jordan were joined on the panel by U.S. District Judge Michael Brown, a Trump appointee sitting by designation from the Northern District of Georgia.
The panel did not indicate when it will issue a ruling in the case.
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