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A former US marine pilot fighting extradition to the US has lost his legal bid to stop the seizure of his family’s property on the New South Wales south coast.
Key points:
Daniel Duggan fights extradition to the United States on charges of conspiracy, arms trafficking and money laundering
Saffrine Duggan was trying to sell the family home to finance her husband’s legal costs.
Duggan’s lawyers said the property was the “sole asset” of his wife and six children.
Daniel Duggan, an Australian citizen, is being held in a maximum security prison west of Sydney, accused by the United States of training Chinese military pilots.
He faces US charges of conspiracy, arms trafficking and money laundering, allegations he denies.
Duggan’s wife, Saffrine, was trying to sell the family’s multimillion-dollar property on Saddleback Mountain, near Kiama, to fund his legal costs.
But in October, a US judge ordered the seizure and forfeiture of the property, saying it “constitutes or is derived from” the proceeds of crime.
Later that month, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) successfully applied for the New South Wales Supreme Court to register the foreign order and prevent the sale of the property.
In November, Duggan asked the court to set aside the order, arguing that the AFP’s request was based on factual inaccuracies, which his lawyers called “two serious misrepresentations.”
The first was that the company registered as the owner of the property, Power Art Trading Ltd, was incorrectly named in an affidavit by AFP officer Simon Moore as “Power Art Trading Pty Ltd”.
The second was that the affidavit described Mr Duggan as a “director of Power Art Trading” when, in fact, he has never been a director of that entity.
The sole director of Power Art Trading Ltd is Saffrine Duggan, and Mr Duggan’s lawyers said the property was the “sole asset” of his wife and six children.
But in a ruling handed down Wednesday, Judge Nicholas Chen dismissed Duggan’s case.
The judge accepted Mr Moore’s evidence that the errors were the product of “innocent inadvertence and lack of attention to detail”.
“I do not accept that this should be characterized as anything more sinister,” Judge Chen wrote.
According to the ruling, the official explained that he “erroneously assumed or inferred” that Duggan was a director of the company and did not realize his error until the defendant’s lawyers mentioned it in correspondence.
The judge rejected Mr. Duggan’s “definitive claim” that a foreign country was “seeking to restrain real estate from a corporate entity that has committed no crime.”
“Whether or not (Mr. Duggan) was a director of Power Art Trading, it said nothing about the ownership of the property,” Judge Chen wrote.
Duggan family ‘devastated’
Responding to the sentencing, Duggan said the family was “extremely disappointed and devastated with the decision.”
“These orders cast a dark cloud over the future of six Australian children,” he said.
Mrs Duggan added: “We will also find it very difficult to fight for justice for my beloved husband, who has been locked up in solitary confinement without local charges for almost 14 months.
“Not only do we face a second Christmas without Dan, but this decision makes it nearly impossible for us to fight for his freedom.”