By Paul Gable
New court filings in the Southern Holdings case next week are expected to fully reveal a wide ranging conspiracy to keep details of the case from ever being heard in open court.
According to sources familiar with the new information, it will detail why the Federal Bureau of Investigation provided experts to testify in depositions about key pieces of evidence in the case.
The FBI is specifically prohibited by federal law from becoming involved in civil lawsuits where the federal government is not a party. The federal government is not a party in Southern Holdings yet the FBI became involved.
The original Southern Holdings case began with the attempt of former Myrtle Beach resident Ancil Garvin, III and several co-conspirators attempting to take over the shares and contracts of Southern Holdings Inc.
The name Ancil Garvin III may be familiar to some readers with the fraudulent financing and ultimate failure of the Bahama Island and Crystal Palace projects in North Myrtle Beach.
A company called Atlewa Trust, of which Garvin was a co-founder in 2004 with Rufus Paul Harris and DuWayne Woods, was supposed to provide the financing for the projects. Instead, approximately $6 million of down payments went missing from escrow accounts.
Harris and Woods are currently serving time in federal prison for this and other scams they were involved with. Garvin remains free and allegedly living on Mindanao in the southern Philippines.
The real asset of Southern Holdings that Garvin wanted was exclusive contracts to import cigarettes into Venezuela, worth approximately $20 million. However, the company Southern Holdings took over to obtain the contracts, Ivestra, was also involved in the cigarette black market operating over the Venezuela/Columbia border.
When Southern Holdings executives and board members discovered details of the black market operations, they sought to sell their Ivestra holdings. Garvin, who was heavily involved in the cigarette operations of Ivestra, wanted to prevent the divestiture.
According to new information that will be filed in the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, at least some of the financing of the black market cigarette operations was provided by two Saudi Arabian charities.
This is the crucible in which the Southern Holdings conspiracy was formed.
According to sources familiar with the upcoming filing, the new court documents will provide revelations that tie together various parts of the conspiracy that have never made sense when looked at individually.
Speak Up…