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Emerald Capital partner details money transfers

Jason Bagg, a director of Emerald Capital International, gave evidence in the theft trial of fellow directors Antoinette and David Bolden.

Antoinette Bolden transferred tens of thousands of dollars per day out of an investment company she’s accused of stealing from, and sent the funds to her own accounts.Jason Bagg gave evidence of the transactions in Supreme Court yesterday, detailing money movements of up to $60,000 in one day.Mr Bagg is one of two Canadian directors of Emerald Capital International (ECI) who claim Mrs Bolden and her husband stole more than $300,000 from the company.He and John Wright held equal shares in ECI along with the Boldens and say they never authorised or approved the large-scale withdrawals from its funds. Prosecutors say the couple plundered the accounts in late 2008 and early 2009 to support their failing Emerald Financial Group companies, pay debts, and live beyond their means.They’re charged with 18 counts of theft, six of money laundering and one of misleading the Bermuda Monetary Authority. They deny all the allegations and have asserted, via defence lawyer Saul Froomkin QC, that the banking transactions were legitimate.Mr Bagg told the jury he and Mr Wright could monitor the Bermuda-based company’s accounts from Canada via online banking from December 2007 until October 2008.They then lost access to the accounts because the Bank of Butterfield changed the security settings.He asked Mrs Bolden, a chartered accountant who was chief financial officer of the company, to send him the new security key.Mr Bagg said she failed to do so, despite him making multiple requests via phone and e-mail. The bank would not send one because it needed to be collected in person.Mr Bagg said he also tried, without success, to obtain company bank and financial statements from Mrs Bolden.He explained that on September 29, 2008, before he lost access to the internet banking, there was more than $582,000 in one of ECI’s bank accounts and more than $192,000 in another.Mrs Bolden eventually gave him the security key and printouts of the ECI bank statements during a visit to Bermuda on January 26, 2009, “literally five minutes before I had to leave to catch my flight to Toronto”.Mr Bagg looked at them the next day, and noticed more than $300,000 missing from the accounts.“The first thing I noticed was that the balance of the accounts had dropped significantly [enough] to cause alarm and a lot of the withdrawals from the accounts were in $10,000 increments,” he told the jury.According to Mr Bagg, a partner in the company could make a transaction of up to $10,000 without it needing to be signed off.Over that amount, a signature from one of the Bermuda partners and one of the Canada partners was required.He said all expenses should be submitted via a claim form to be circulated to all the partners for approval.When Mrs Bolden supplied a breakdown of the missing sums, Mr Bagg said some of the items listed were never approved, authorised or submitted to the company via the expenses form.These included a $90,000 payment to Mr Bolden and $20,000 to Mrs Bolden, $61,000 rent for the Emerald Group offices, and $16,000 worth of long-distance calls.Working his way through a spreadsheet detailing the first five theft charges against the Boldens, Mr Bragg told the jury Mrs Bolden made six withdrawals of $10,000 at a time on November 6, 2008.Of that, $40,000 went to the Boldens’ personal account and $20,000 to their Emerald Financial Group account.On November 19, $11,256 was sent to Mrs Bolden’s MasterCard in two separate transactions of $4,191 and $7,065.On the same date, $40,000 was sent to the Emerald Financial Group.Mr Bagg told the jury none of the transactions was authorised by him, he never received any documents or claim forms relating to them, and the Boldens never mentioned they were going to make them.The case continues.