CRAWFORD CONTRACTS COLLECTION

By Janet Marcusse

This is a summary of what we have experienced in attempting to collect contracts owed to the investor group. We were constantly told it will be “tomorrow” and "tomorrow" yet another “excuse” would pop up why it can’t happen. To this day the investor group has not received any government help collecting these funds. No government official disputes that we are owed the money and there have even been several attempts to pay us.

We have two $25.5 million contracts in the name of Crawford Ltd. through Robert Rydberg for a total of $51 million still due to the investor group. One contract was number NNPC/PED/1203/91 with the NNPC (Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation), a wholly owned Nigerian government corporation. Mr. Rydberg has spoken with countless government officials, both theirs and ours, officers of the Central Bank, and officials of both embassies. These officials always agree to help us, but the help is never effective. He got an average of at least half a dozen to sometimes as many as two dozen fraudulent “offers” to help him obtain the money every day. Clearly his name is “posted” somewhere over there as being a legitimate contractor.

Can we sue Nigeria and get paid? Our financial advisor Richard Gerry called Todd Knecht in September, 2002 and was told the answer was yes so we believed that collection for our $25.5 million was entirely possible. The Associated Press reported, "Grand Rapids engineer sues Nigerians for $100-million" in a federal lawsuit against Nigeria and its state-run oil company (NNPC), alleging that they refused to make good on a contract and that he was cheated out of $500,000 while trying to recover the money. Tolliver's attorney, Todd Knecht, said Nigeria contacted the American Concrete Pipe Association about an oil pipeline problem. The pipe association suggested the job go to Tolliver, a highly regarded specialist with 54 patents and four others pending.” Todd indicated to Richard Gerry that he would need $35k to $50k to proceed on our behalf, funds we simply did not have at the time. We were full partners with Mr. Rydberg because we paid taxes due and other costs as part of the investment, since he did not have enough funds to collect the contract. A chart regarding these costs are summarized showing the transactions. We were told that as soon as these taxes were paid, we would be paid. That has not occurred. Perhaps we still could get paid if the government would devote even a fraction of the time they did prosecuting us and following the end of the real money trail.

While no one can reasonably argue that the Nigerian government is not corrupt, there is also abundant evidence through diligent research that they are not the only guilty party in this situation. I believe that U.S. government agencies easily collect funds when "preferred" contractors such as Haliburton are involved by exerting pressure to achieve political results. It's become painfully obvious now that recovering funds or the location of investment money was never that important to the government and the case was never really about the investors.

Shortly before the USA v. Marcusse trial, Mr. Rydberg died and was verified by several different sources. Given all of this, it is obvious to me that simply continuing to “work” with government officials to get paid is a guaranteed losing proposition. Only by exposure of the RICO fraud, corruption and control being exerted by the “powers that be” who are clearly far too selfish to “share” with anyone but their own exclusive “club” do we have any chance of getting the money which is rightfully due us.

For the benefit of the investor group, we need help to proceed towards litigation and resolve this issue.