21 months conviction for managing director Mido Trust

July 27, 2008 1:04 PM

Minguelita Lourens (61), managing director of Mido Trust & Management NV, was sentenced to 36 months last week of which 15 months are conditional. Between the 1st of January 2003 and the 31st of December 2004 she embezzled more than 93 million guilders from her clients. A large sum of the money is still missing.

The Public Prosecutor had claimed three years jail time of which one year conditional. It is not clear whether the Public Prosecutor will appeal. Lourens has never been taken into pre-trial detention, and is still walking free. The case started in 2004 and Lourens was repeatedly interrogated as a suspect. The minutes were only closed in 2006 and the case content looked at last year, only to be adjourned until the 4th of July of this year. The judge finds that, looking at the relatively complicated issues surrounding the case, the investigation has taken longer than was needed. There has been an overlaps of more than 12 months of the reasonable term. Therefore this will be compensated by converting a big part of the claim into a suspended sentence. The judge found the Public Prosecutor’s sentence claim to be adequate. He found it proven that Lourens was guilty of embezzlement and forgery in deeds to ‘conceal her practices’.

The judge did want to accept that the woman had become a victim of swindlers, with the so-called Nigerian-trick and such, as her lawyers had pleaded. “But that circumstance cannot justify the unlawful handling of the managed funds entrusted to her.” The woman can seriously be held accountable for the fact that she, according to her own account, while awaiting the funds yet to be received, had utilized around 3,5 million dollars for her own profit. The companies which were robbed were Yardworth Corporation, Concord Trust, Halifax Trust, Boston General, Shaw Software, Salem Lifeco and Logos Investments, amongst others. “A lot of money is still missing and confidence in the trust system has been seriously damaged. An unconditional sentence is thus in its place”, finds the judge.
According to Lourens, she came to her deeds through finding herself in a depressed state which caused her to act beside herself. But according to tests done by a psychiatrist as well as a psychologist this was unlikely. She will have difficulties with the detention being 61 years of age, but the scope of the facts can not be let off with just correction activities, and it is not like she’s completely unsuited for detention either, show the reports.

(Source: National Newspaper Amigoe)

July 22, 2008