The money – $14.4m. plus years of accrued interest – had sat frozen in an account at the Royal Bank of Canada in Guernsey for nearly 20 years, and has now been transferred to the States’ Seized Asset Fund after the Guernsey Court of Appeal ordered its forfeiture, and a last bid from its owner had been thrown out by the Privy Council.
‘This outcome reflects the skill and professionalism of our asset recovery team, who conducted a complex and lengthy investigation over several years,’ said Phil Hunkin, director of the Economic and Financial Crime Bureau, which worked closely with the Law Officers in bringing the matter to court.
‘The forfeiture of more than $15m. demonstrates our commitment to identifying, freezing, and ultimately recovering the proceeds of crime.
'It sends a clear message that Guernsey is not a haven for illicit funds.’
The account was tied to Frank Laport, a Chicago personal injury lawyer who died in 2005. The company which held it, Fidelity Management Limited, had been set up in the Turks and Caicos Islands by a man calling himself Clive Knowles, who was in fact Laport, using a forged Australian driving licence as proof of identity. The account itself was opened in December 1995 by a Thomas Henry Magill, said to be a company director, but this was again Laport, this time using a fraudulently obtained Canadian passport.
During his life Laport was investigated by the FBI between 1996 and 1998 over suspected links to organised crime, which he refused to cooperate with and which were never proven, and twice by the US tax authorities, neither of which led to criminal charges.
The account had been under an ‘informal freeze’ by the Guernsey authorities since 2007, after an associate of Laport’s tried to move the money to a Swiss bank account and was refused. A formal freezing order followed in 2023, and the law officers applied for forfeiture in 2024.
At the heart of the case was a question about who had to prove what. Forfeiture was sought under section 13 of the island’s 2007 forfeiture law, which deals with civil forfeiture – a process separate from any criminal prosecution, decided on the balance of probabilities rather than the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt. The dispute was whether, to forfeit the money, HM Comptroller Hilary Pullum first had to prove a link between the funds and some specific, identifiable crime.
The Royal Court found that it did. In a judgment from January 2025, Lt-Bailiff Hazel Marshall held that the Comptroller was bound to establish a ‘causal nexus’ between the account and particular unlawful conduct, and had not done so – and that, in any event, the company had shown on the evidence that the funds were not criminal.
The Court of Appeal took a different view. In August 2025 it ruled that the law places no such obligation on the Comptroller to tie the money to a specific crime. Instead, under section 13, once funds are frozen, the burden falls on the party opposing forfeiture – the company in this case – to prove, on the balance of probabilities, that the money is not the proceeds of anyone’s unlawful conduct.
The court found that the use of false identities and forged documents gave rise to a strong inference that the funds were part of a criminal enterprise, and that the company had produced no credible explanation to displace it. It also held that this reverse burden of proof was compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
The ruling now stands as the leading authority on how the 2007 law works.
The company took the case to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which refused it permission to appeal, ending the matter.
HM Procureur Megan Pullum said: ‘This case demonstrates Guernsey’s commitment to disrupting criminal activity through the seizure of the proceeds of crime, and the decision of the Court of Appeal confirms that Guernsey’s legal framework strikes the right balance between robustness and respect for human rights.’