Embajada de Colombia
2118 Leroy Place, NW
Washington, DC 20008
Phone: (202)-387-8338
Fax: (202)-232-8643
emwas@colombiaemb.org
cc Congress of the United States
Dear Ambassador Barco,
My name is Yolanda de Zakzuk, Julio Zakzuk’s widow, a citizen of the United States, along with my children, and majority stockholder for Maritimas Internacionales Limitada. Maritimas, our company, was an enterprise founded by my husband in Cartagena in the 1960’s. In 1982, we were ostensibly hired to transport 1,100 tons from the US port of Tampa, to Barranquilla, Colombia, by the Colombian governmental banking institution Caja Agraria, Industrial y Minero's legally authorized Agent. We complied by sending our ship, the motor vessel Don Julio, from Honduras to Tampa, loaded your cargo, transported it to Barranquilla and were never paid for our work. Indeed, when we attempted to obtain justice in the courts, the courts have ended up being accomplices of these same corrupt Colombian government officials. It has been 25 years and we have not even reached an appellate level decision, much less obtained any measure of justice.
We documented the episode, step by step, and sued in Juzgado 8 Civil, in Bogota, Colombia, in 1983 after suffering multitude of damages by the acts of highly placed Colombian government officials in the Caja Agraria, such as Director General of the Caja Agraria Mariano Ospina Hernandez:
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii255/zaknick/Post_Arrival_Don_Julio_1.jpg
It is widely known, through a multitude of investigations into the Caja Agraria, and other state banking institutions, that this kind of presidential political appointment was one of the traditional gateways to thousands of episodes of massive fraud against the Colombian public treasury, the majority of them masterminded by the highest executives in the entity, before finally imploding in 1999. Every government since the 1980’s ignored the scandals, or actively covered them up, and every government minister who tried to deal with the Caja Agraria corruption problem was crucified by the Colombian government.
Please see links to article in Colombian news weekly Semana detailing a Truth Commission investigation report into the corruption at the major official Colombian government banking institution Caja Agraria:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddjd6f6x_77ct7qkrcq
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddjd6f6x_83gp9v9pcn
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddjd6f6x_81whjzz9gj
After we initiated legal proceedings because your government check bounced at your own national banking institution
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii255/zaknick/InsufficientFundsCloseUp.jpg
Mr. Ospina tried to have my husband imprisoned by falsely accusing him of trying to obtain payment twice, using Colombia's judicial system to terrorize our family with the possibility of taking my husband to Bogotá in chains. A Colombian judge flew to Barranquilla, from Bogotá, asked my husband to relinquish the diplomatic immunity he was entitled to as Consul of Denmark for 25 years, and proceeded to submit my husband to interrogatory. The judge ended up excusing himself after seeing the evidence of the fraud committed against our enterprise and against the Colombian treasury by this government official. He also requested that the ship not be unloaded so that an investigation may proceed but that was also buried by the ineffective and corrupt Colombian courts. Indeed, Mr. Ospina was never prosecuted; only his bag man, Heiner Jansen, and his company Petrofert, were prosecuted for the fraud.
It is also noteworthy that the Caja Agraria, as a governmental banking institution, had to be aware of Colombian legislation and regulation in reference to currency controls, in effect at the time, which made it illegal to pay a Colombian ship-owner in US dollars and instead mandated, as our contract required, that payment be made in Colombian pesos.
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii255/zaknick/Juzak_Uribe_1993.jpg see points A and E
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii255/zaknick/ClauseXVIexplained.jpg see Clause XVI
Indeed, this was the traditional way the Caja Agraria paid Colombian ship owners: at the port through its agent Almagrario S.A.; the same one who issued the check that bounced. The sending of the freight charges included in the Letter of Credit payable to a foreign manufacturer and then hiring us was illegal proving the malfeasance and bad faith with which Colombian government officials at the Caja Agraria were proceeding because they were aware of our contract from the moment it was signed. Not only this, but they also knew the contract stipulated Freight Collect when they had already given our payment to Amax Chemical, the manufacturer of the product the Caja Agraria was buying.
We will petition our elected officials in Congress to protect our rights against your government’s 25 year long abuse and will be providing all documentation, along with our request that your government live up to the expectation of conducting government behavior according to the rule of law before any trade alliance is granted. The Charter Party Agreement our company used was based on the GENCON (general conditions) standard created by the maritime trade standard setting body BIMCO, founded in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1905, and included in Clause XXV was the USA Clause Paramount which made this contract valid and subject to the jurisdiction of the Congress under the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act of 1936.
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddjd6f6x_67d76cj4cs
This means that by committing fraud in American jurisdiction the Colombian government not only has abused United States citizens’ property but also broken the laws of the Congress of the United States.
The Carriage of Goods by Sea Act of Congress also reads, in part:
§ 1304. Rights and immunities of carrier and ship
Neither the carrier nor the ship shall be responsible for loss or damage arising or resulting from--
Act or omission of the shipper or owner of the goods, his agent or representative
We demand closure for this sordid chapter of blatant nepotism and corruption in the Colombian government’s history, for it was your government which was the offender and continues to be to this day through its corrupt legal system. It took 13 years, which in itself is proof of judicial fraud, to obtain a judge‘s decision on our case, at only the first instance level, and according to this judge, we, the victim of their crime, have to prove the malfeasance by the Caja Agraria; that is incorrect, the Caja Agraria was directly responsible, as the Principal, for its Agent’s, or better put Mr. Ospina’s bag man, Heiner Jansen and his company Petrofert Limitada’s, actions including any contracts entered into by it in fulfillment of its obligations to the Principal. This is a basic principle of commercial law jurisprudence found under the Principal Agent legal relationship. Besides, if it was anybody’s job to prove the fraud it was the Colombian government, except, of course it wasn’t about to investigate a son of an ex-president of Colombia, because the evidence has been sitting in their courts for 25 years.
We believe that it was Clause XXIII which created the other large impasse to obtaining some measure of justice:
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii255/zaknick/CLAUSULAXXIII.jpg
Costs incurred: http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii255/zaknick/Demurrage.jpg
As you can see in the links above, the terms of demurrage were stipulated at the rate of US $1,000.00 per day; the ship was immobilized for 156 days. The rate for transport was US $32.00 per metric ton and we carried 1,100 tons +-5%, payable in pesos before unloading the ship, or F.I.O.S.T. The interest rate for any delays in paying the Commercial Invoice was 0.9% compounded daily. That’s correct, compounded daily, which makes your government legally liable to Maritimas Internacionales Limitada a number which has grown to 40 digits through 25 years of impunity. We acknowledge that this figure is not realistic and are willing to accept a rate which closely resembles Maritimas’ historic profit margin. This is the only fair outcome we will accept.
This next link is a document my husband wrote in 1986, after presenting another bill in 1984 for US $750,000, asking Mariano Ospina Hernandez for authorization to collect from Amax Chemical our freight charges, which he himself had authorized being given to the foreign manufacturer who was the beneficiary of Letter of Credit #5276. He, of course, ignored our request as this might have meant an international investigation outside of his manipulation.
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii255/zaknick/Juzak_1986.jpg
It is also worth noting that the documentation for the fertilizer bought by Caja Agaria specified that the material was to be of a more expensive quality than the one actually sent, we discovered this fact after obtaining the Seventh Civil Court of Barranquilla's permission to unload the ship, at our expense, and auction the cargo off. This was the other way Mr. Ospina was profiting from the scheme. The Colombian judicial system is privy to this further evidence of corruption and yet it has willingly turned a blind eye for 25 years.
What we are not willing to accept is our claim for justice to continue being made a mockery of for another second. The Colombian government must pay its bill now.
The case is now sitting in the archives at the Tribunal Superior de Antioquia with Case #0042. We would also like to point out that it has not escaped our attention that Medellin, where our case sits, is the traditional political bastion of the Ospina family.
Should your government prove unresponsive to our request to settle this, here and now, in Washington, before our elected officials, then efforts to publicize your government’s corrupt behavior will commence and this will end with a hunger strike in front of your embassy in Washington and in the Congress of the United States by the widow, the children and grandchildren of your victim which are all United States citizens.
Sincerely,
Yolanda de Zakzuk and family
(signed in original)
US Citizens and Majority Stockholders
Maritimas Internacionales Ltda.
Additional evidence:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddjd6f6x_54c93v4vgn Amax Chemical Commercial Invoice clearly stating “FREIGHT PREPAID”. The Letter of Credit opened by the Caja Agraria, First Milwaukee Bank, L.C. # 5276 was done in June of 1982. The Commercial Invoice is dated September 8, 1982. The contract with us was signed months later in November 9, 1982. We were not included in the Letter of Credit nor were we aware of it.
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddjd6f6x_563sqn2tdf Bill of Lading clearly stating “FREIGHT COLLECT”.
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii255/zaknick/DonJulio.jpg The Don Julio in 1982.
http://s266.photobucket.com/albums/ii255/zaknick/?action=view¤t=4ea24186.pbw Charter Party Agreement slideshow (click on images for close-up and allow popup for site)
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii255/zaknick/ospina_caja_agrariaconnection.jpg quote from “Blood and Fire: La Violencia in Antioquia, Colombia 1946-1953” by Mary Roldan, which succinctly sums up the traditional hold on the Colombian governmental banking institution Caja Agraria by the Ospina family.
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii255/zaknick/resume.jpg Director General of the Caja Agraria Mariano Ospina.
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii255/zaknick/ClauseXVIexplained.jpg Clause XVI explained.
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii255/zaknick/ClauseUSAPAramount.jpg USA Clause Paramount explained.
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii255/zaknick/ClauseXVIII.jpg Clause XVIII explained.
http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii255/zaknick/numbers.jpg initial numbers.
