By Dan Christensen and Patrick Danner

Prosecutors are urging a change in state law to allow them to falsify court records in some cases.

LEADING INQUIRY: Court Chief Justice R. Fred Lewis is conducting a statewide inquiry into the hiding of court records after The Miami Herald reported that hundreds of civil and criminal cases, mostly in Broward County, were kept hidden on secret dockets.

Florida’s prosecutors are floating a proposal to the Legislature to give them the power to secretly falsify public court records – with a judge’s approval – for undercover law enforcement purposes.

Spurred by Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle, the draft bill would limit the authority to manufacture and plant fake documents in court files to 180 days. But it also provides for an unlimited number of 30-day extensions.

‘’Judges would be very involved in the monitoring. It all has to go through a judge,’’ said Arthur I. ‘’Buddy’’ Jacobs, general counsel for the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, which supports the bill.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida opposes the idea.

“The fundamental problem is that it so goes against our notion of the way our justice system ought to work,’’ said ACLU legislative director Randall Marshall. “How would we ever be able to trust anything in the judicial record knowing that something could be intentionally falsified with a judicial seal of approval?’’

Tallahassee Public Defender Nancy Daniels said the proposal undermines constitutional protections for those charged with crimes.

“Even if this is temporary, what if someone testifies during that time and we never get to know they had a criminal conviction? We can’t properly cross-examine to develop their motives for giving testimony,’’ Daniels said.

The bill has been pre-filed with the Florida Senate for the legislative session that begins March 6.

A second, longer version of the bill has been pre-filed with the House. It would convey authority to falsify any public record to prosecutors, judges, mayors, sheriffs, coroners and other public officers unless they were acting corruptly.

The Miami Herald reported late last year how judges and prosecutors in Miami-Dade had official court records altered and kept secret dockets to disguise what was happening in some court cases.

Two cases were uncovered in which court dockets were altered to cover up the felony convictions of informants, but more are known to exist. Chief Assistant State Attorney Jose Arrojo said authorities have altered the public records of informants for two decades.

It is a crime for anyone in Florida, including judges and prosecutors, to alter or falsify court records or proceedings.

Violators can be sent to prison for a year.

STATE INQUIRY

The prosecutors’ push to change Florida criminal statute 839.13 comes amid a statewide inquiry by Supreme Court Chief Justice R. Fred Lewis into the improper hiding of court records. The probe began last summer after The Miami Herald reported that hundreds of civil and criminal cases, mostly in Broward County, were kept hidden on secret dockets.

Rundle sent a letter to the chief justice in December defending the practice of altering public court records as occasionally necessary to protect informants and investigations. She also announced that Miami-Dade judges and prosecutors would no longer ‘’affirmatively’’ falsify dockets.

In response, the Florida Public Defenders Association has asked that the practice be banned.

Ed Griffith, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, said the bill is a priority for the prosecutors’ association, but declined to comment further.

The Senate sponsor is Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, vice chairman of the criminal justice committee. The House sponsor is Rep. Julio Robaina, R-South Miami.

“Ultimately, this protects the public against the evil of corruption,’’ Aronberg said. “It’s just another tool. How else can you get at a corrupt judge unless you create false pleadings?’’

TWO SCENARIOS

In an e-mail to Aronberg’s office, Ted Mannelli, executive director to the state attorney, wrote that prosecutors have used the technique in “two scenarios.’’

“In a very, very, very limited number of cases, perhaps less than five over the last two and one half decades in our circuit, bogus court records have been generated in corruption investigations targeting judges,’’ Mannelli wrote.

The other scenario Mannelli described involves any case in which defendants plead guilty and sentencing is deferred to let informants work undercover.

Mannelli did not say how many times that has happened.

He wrote in the e-mail and confirmed in a phone interview that prosecutors believe Florida’s prohibition on altering court records doesn’t apply to them because they have acted “without corrupt intent.’’

The law, however, makes no such distinction. The Florida Supreme Court also has ruled that a lack of corrupt intent does not excuse the faking of court records.

1997 CASE

Broward County Judge Laran Johnson backdated records in an apparent attempt to keep her caseload low. In 1997, the court removed her from office because “her knowing and repeated acts of falsifying public records strike at the very heart of judicial integrity.’’

Today, prosecutors want the law changed to make sure ‘’these procedures are clearly legal and allow for their continuation,’’ Mannelli said in the email.

By Paul Voosen, Staff Writer, The Prague Post

While the Finance Ministry drafts a new moneylaundering bill, 2.7 Million secret passbooks are still in circulation.

In an effort to close one loophole that money launderers use to hide ill-gotten gains, the Czech Republic passed a law nearly five years ago calling for the conversion of all the country’s anonymous deposit passbooks into registered accounts.

The anonymous accounts got their start during the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, since they left no recorded identity with the banks, were often used to move money without a trail.

“Anyone who held an [anonymous] passbook was perceived by the bank to be the owner of the account and could withdraw all of the account’s deposits,” said Jirí S¢korvaga, a member of the board of Ceská sporitelna, which holds all of the country’s passbook accounts.

Years after the frenetic process that saw most of the country’s accounts converted, officials at Ceská sporitelna and the Finance Ministry have questioned the necessity of converting the remaining passbook accounts, as some 4.1 billion Kc ($190 million) left in 2.7 million accounts sits unclaimed.

The decision to abolish the accounts was made on the recommendation of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which sets international standards for stopping money laundering, Finance Ministry spokesman Jaroslav Ru¢zek said.

But the benefits of this decision are not unambiguous.

“The money held in these accounts, in practicality, could not have been misused for money laundering,” Ru¢zek said. Yes, it’s true that they could be used by anyone to withdraw money from an account, but the “important fact is that they could not have been used for credit or cashless wire transfers,” making any movement of the money a much more physical process.

S¢ korvaga allows for the concerns the European Union and FATF had about the anonymous passbooks, but also adds: “We never had a single case proving this assumption.”

Long tradition

Passbooks date to the 19th century, when they were the first deposit product broadly used by the public; new accounts would often be opened for birthdays or other special events. Under communism, the passbooks were one of the few options for saving money, and afterward remained popular for their security, ease of use and simplicity, S¢ korvaga said.

While 90 percent of the bank’s passbook accounts – 6.6 million in 2002 – were anonymous, registered versions of passbooks also exist and are still frequently opened in the country.

Prior to the bank’s 2002 advertising blitz, most of its customers were not aware that they had an anonymous passbook, S¢korvaga said. The books always had a blank line on their first page for a name, and nearly everyone with a book filled the line out with their first and last names.

“This despite the fact that the line was completely optional and could be filled out with anything from ‘My beloved granddaughter’ to ‘Mickey Mouse, ” he said.

In 2002, Ceská sporitelna had 120 billion Kc deposited in these accounts, a number that dropped 100 billion by the end of the year, after a campaign by the bank warning customers that their accounts would no longer earn interest and could not receive deposits.

The conversion of its passbook accounts cost Ceská sporitelna about 150 million Kc and lowered the bank’s profitability, as many of its customers migrated to accounts that brought them more interest or value, S¢ korvaga said.

“This net interest margin lost from our converted accounts far balanced any gain we had from paying no interest on remaining accounts,” he said.

Of course, the bank still holds over 4 billion Kc in savings accounts that it can continue to use for profit without paying interest, and Czech law states that if this money is not withdrawn by 2012, it will be forfeited to the bank.

Despite this possibility, S¢ korvaga says the bank will continue to honor withdrawal requests from anonymous passbook accounts after 2012, whatever the reason customers have been delayed in converting them – old age, forgetfulness or sheer torpidity.

“It’s our long-term standard,” he said. “Our clients will not lose money with us, no matter how long they did not access the account.”

Rinse cycle

While there is no estimate as to how well the Czech Republic is combating money laundering, it can be assumed that since the country has followed every recommendation given to it by the FATF and the EU, the volume of laundered money is in decline, Ru¢zek said.

The Finance Ministry is now drafting a new comprehensive bill on money laundering that is set to replace the country’s frequently amended 1996 law.

The new bill is needed to bring the country into accord with a new set of financial dictates from the EU.

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