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EditorsMar 13, 2013
Undisclosed and still unpunished
The lawsuit filed by one-time Gemesis CEO Stephen Lux against his former company in U.S. Circuit Court in Florida is ongoing, with the latest filing in the case coming earlier this month.
On March 1, Gemesis Diamond Company (f/k/a The Gemesis Corporation) filed a motion to disqualify Spivey & Fallon, P.A. as co-counsel for Lux namely because one of the partners in the firm, Cynthia L. Fallon, is Lux’s wife.In the suit, Gemesis states that Fallon had an “intimate relationship with both the confidential and corporate dealings of Gemesis as well as personal matters relating to Mr. Lux, individually. As a result, Ms. Fallon wore ‘two hats:’ corporate representation for Gemesis and personal representation for Mr. Lux.”
In addition, the suit states that Fallon and her current law partner, Barry Spivey, previously worked at a law firm that served as outside counsel for Gemesis. All of this adds up to a conflict of interest for the firm to represent Lux in his current lawsuit, Gemesis claims, and the company wants Spivey & Fallon removed.
It’s an interesting wrinkle, to be sure, and it’s a case we will certainly continue to follow, though I don’t purport to have a guess as to how the court will rule on this particular matter, being no expert in the area of what constitutes conflict of interest among attorneys.
What I did find interesting about the filing, however, was a small paragraph regarding the apparently still-ongoing investigation by Belgian authorities into the parcel of hundreds of undisclosed synthetic diamonds that surfaced at the International Gemological Institute laboratory in Antwerp last spring, diamonds that have been linked to Gemesis/Su-Raj Diamonds, though no criminal charges have been brought in the case.
“Ms. Fallon was involved in the sensitive matter regarding the Belgian investigation into the relationship between Gemesis and Su-Raj Diamonds,” court documents state. “Ms. Fallon has intimate knowledge regarding the investigation and subpoena, as well as the circumstances surrounding the investigation.”
The paragraph, admittedly, doesn’t tell us much but at least we know the investigation is ongoing, which is more than I can get out of anyone officially involved with the case, either here or in Belgium.
The lead investigator in Antwerp (which is where I’ve been told to direct my inquiries about the case) is Agim De Bruycker. Although I received no reply from him regarding my inquiry about the case a few months ago, I decided to reach out again when news broke of the multi-million dollar heist at the Brussels airport late last month.
This time he replied--eureka!--but only to
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say he was bound to secrecy. (And the same goes for his colleagues in Brussels that are investigating the airport heist.)
I assume that this secrecy only lasts as long as the investigation is ongoing and we will eventually hear what, if anything, will be done to those parties that attempted to pass off a relatively large parcel of lab-grown diamonds as natural.
I assume that this secrecy only lasts as long as the investigation is ongoing and we will eventually hear what, if anything, will be done to those parties that attempted to pass off a relatively large parcel of lab-grown diamonds as natural.
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