A federal judge on Wednesday ordered that testimony from a key witness in the government’s case against Davidson and Sasha Charlemagne will be excluded from trial, and materials related to the witness’s deposition will remain under seal.
Attorneys for the Charlemagnes and prosecutors have repeatedly clashed over the admissibility of testimony from Morris Anselmi, a former contractor whose company landed a multimillion-dollar federally funded contract administered by the V.I. Housing Finance Authority in 2021 to manage disaster recovery lumber. According to prosecutors, Anselmi’s company, Island Services Group, subcontracted the work to the Charlemagnes’ company, D&S Trucking, which falsified timesheets and collected increasingly inflated payments while leaving the lumber exposed to the elements.
Former VIHFA Chief Operating Officer Darin Richardson was also charged in connection with the alleged fraud, but his case was ultimately severed. A jury in March found Richardson guilty of making material false statements to a federal agent, criminal conflict of interest, bank fraud, money laundering and making false statements on a loan application. Over the course of the trial, U.S. attorneys showed that Richardson received a $107,000 payment from Anselmi and that he continued signing payments to the company after supposedly recusing himself from all matters related to ISG.
Prior to the allegations against the Charlemagnes, Anselmi and another ISG principal, Kimberly McCollum, were themselves charged with misusing half a million dollars in funds obtained through the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which provided forgivable loans to small businesses struggling amid the COVID-19 pandemic. While the cases against the Charlemagnes and Richardson have progressed, Anselmi has yet to be arraigned because of ongoing medical issues.
Those medical issues prompted prosecutors and attorneys for the defendants to seek a recorded deposition in March. The process came to a standstill after “a dispute arose as to the extent to which Anselmi could be cross-examined regarding the PPP Indictment,” Senior District Judge Wilma Lewis wrote in a memorandum opinion this week. While being questioned about whether he was cooperating with prosecutors in hopes of receiving immunity and if he anticipated receiving benefits for testifying against Davidson Charlemagne, Anselmi reportedly replied, “Well, wouldn’t you?” before confirming by saying, “Yes.”
Lewis found that an immunity agreement between Anselmi and the government only covered testimony related to his business dealings with the Charlemagnes and that “in the absence of a change in Aneslmi’s potential criminal exposure which would permit him to fully answer Defendant’s cross-examination questions … without a legitimate fear of self-incrimination, the Court finds that the only remedy which preserves the rights of all three individuals — D. Charlemagne, S. Charlemagne, and Anselmi — is the exclusion of Anselmi’s testimony from this matter.
St. Croix Source
Local news
