As a petition to wind up Segoes Services Ltd. is scheduled to be heard in Grand Court on Friday, accusations are flying from ownership and former employees concerning who is to blame for the company’s failure.
Segoes Services Ltd., formerly known as Segoes Securities Ltd., was put into joint provisional liquidation on 29 April after a petition by two of its investors through the law firm Campbells.
Around the same time, John Kaweske, a director and owner of the company, wrote to investing clients and told them he had learned ‘various unauthorized transactions have occurred in Segoes Trust, the Segoes Bond Fund, and in other pooled investments’.
Last week, the on-line newsletter KYC Alert published a story detailing allegations made by Mr. Kaweske against two former employees of the company and stock promoter.
It is asserted in that article that Mr. Kaweske has filed a Suspicious Activity Report with the Cayman Islands Financial Reporting Authority.
The FRA, however, was unable to confirm the Suspicious Activity Report because they are confidential documents.
Fred Heard, Acting Director of the FRA, said it was against the law for even the maker a SAR to divulge anything about it.
‘There’s a section of the Proceeds of Criminal Conduct Law that deals with tipping off’,’ he said. ‘It is an offence to disclose that an SAR has been made,’
Rebeca Gonzalez is one of the former Segoes Employees accused of wrongdoing by Mr. Kaweske.
Speaking exclusively to the Caymanian Compass, Ms Gonzales said she was shocked by Mr. Kaweske’s ‘false, delusional allegations’.
Among other things, Ms Gonzalez denied she was fired by Mr. Kaweske.
‘He did not terminate my employment either for the fictitious reasons he alluded to in the libellous mass e-mail he sent to clients, or at all,’ she said. ‘I had no choice but to resign from Segoes after the Brazilian Federal Police apprehended him on 11 April.’
Another source close to this story confirmed Mr. Kaweske was in fact retained for questioning in Brazil.
Ms Gonzales said Mr. Kaweske’s affidavit published in KYC Alert was ‘filled with lies’.
One important element of Mr. Kaweske’s claim that Ms Gonzalez denies is that she was a corporate director of any of the Segoes companies.
‘I was not an officer or director of Segoes,’ she said. ‘I was in marketing and sales.’
Ms Gonzalez admitted that she signed some of her Segoes emails to clients and others Director of Wealth Management, but she said the director use was in an operational sense, not the corporate sense.
‘Wealth management was just another term for sales,’ she said. ‘The only directors of the company were John (Kaweske) and James (Fontanetta).’
Ms Gonzalez said Mr. Kaweske became angry with her after he learned that she had co-operated with Brazilian authorities who were looking into Mr. Kaweske’s activities there.
‘I had no choice but to co-operate with them, and John was very upset by that,’ she said.
Mr. Kaweske and Mr. Fontanetta have both left the Cayman Islands, Ms Gonzales, who is in Florida, said.
However, Ms Gonzales has been to Cayman in recent weeks and said she would be returning to tend to matters concerning the Segoes case and to visit friends.
‘I have no problems coming there,’ she said. ‘I’m fully co-operating with Cayman authorities.’
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