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All Charges Against Carlos Loumiet Dismissed

MIAMI, July 29 /PRNewswire/ -- The US Comptroller of the Currency has dismissed all charges against Miami attorney, Carlos Loumiet.

After three years of litigation, a three week trial and a 56 page opinion from the trial judge, Ann Z. Cook, totally exonerating Mr. Loumiet, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) appealed that decision to its boss, the Comptroller of the Currency, John C. Dugan.

Comptroller Dugan considered the matter for about one year and has now dismissed all charges against Mr. Loumiet.

"I am very happy that all of the charges against me have been dropped. As I have said all along I did not engage in any misconduct nor did I breach my duty to my client. And while the process has finally reached the correct and just conclusion, this has been a very trying ordeal for me and my family," Mr. Loumiet said upon hearing the decision.

The case arose out of an investigation done by Mr. Loumiet's then law firm, Greenberg Traurig, on behalf of the Audit Committee of Hamilton Bank. Mr. Loumiet was one of the team of lawyers working on that investigation. In his order the Comptroller conceded that the two resulting reports authored by Mr. Loumiet exhaustively laid out the facts of the transactions in question but faults Mr. Loumiet for not coming to conclusions favored by the OCC relative to the conduct of the bank's officers. However, the Comptroller failed to note that when Greenberg undertook its task the OCC had already employed fifteen to twenty of its own bank examiners to audit the same transactions for almost two years and, nonetheless, the OCC itself could not reach those same conclusions which the Comptroller now suggests Mr. Loumiet should have made.

The Comptroller also faults Judge Cook for excluding the testimony of one of the OCC's experts, Criminal Law Professor James Fleissner, as to a lawyer's standard of care in conducting this sort of a civil investigation, suggesting that this testimony "could" have made a difference in some regard even though not in the eventual outcome of the case since the Comptroller was dismissing the matter on other grounds. However, the Comptroller fails to note that Professor Fleissner's sole experience as a lawyer was as a criminal prosecutor, that he had never practiced civil or commercial law, had never been in private practice, had never conducted an audit investigation or any other private sector investigation, had never written or taught on the subject of private sector investigations and also admitted that he was not knowledgeable about corporations, banks, or banking law or securities law. It was on this basis that Judge Cook found that Professor Fleissner did not have the experience or qualifications to render expert testimony as to the professional standard of care involved in such a civil investigation, a decision traditionally very much in the discretion of the trial judge.

Likewise, the Comptroller's order suggests that the subject reports did not set forth the evidentiary standard being applied to the reported facts. This is incorrect since the March, 2001 report clearly sets forth the fact that the investigating team was applying a civil procedure test of a "preponderance of the evidence" standard in reaching its conclusions.

In the end the Comptroller conceded, as he had to, that Hamilton Bank had suffered no harm as a result of the conclusions arrived at in the two reports. Instead the Bank's financial statements had been revised to correctly reflect the nature of the underlying transactions based on the facts so exhaustively outlined in those reports. Ironically, the fact that there had been no damage to the bank from the reports, as the applicable statute under which Mr. Loumiet was sued on requires, had been amply evident to the OCC four years ago at the beginning of the case. This fact had been brought to the attention of the OCC prosecutors numerous times. Therefore, under the Comptroller's own reasoning for dismissing the case, the case was an exercise in futility from its very inception and a huge waste of both private sector and taxpayer resources.

Mr. Loumiet added: "I am very glad that this weight has been lifted and I can now move on, putting my full energies on my family, my practice and my work as chair of the New America Alliance, a national association for leading Latinos in U.S. business."

With offices in Miami and West Palm Beach, Richman Greer, P.A. offers a wide array of legal services to its clients focusing on commercial and contract disputes, real estate, family law, estates, trusts and probate, class actions and other commercial transactions. In 2008, five shareholders in the firm were named Most Effective Lawyers in recognition of the significant victories they achieved for clients involving Regulatory and Class Action legal matters. For additional information, visit www.richmangreer.com.

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SOURCE Richman Greer