Office of the Special Prosecutor has filed another Show Cause Hearing motion on the former President Tommy Remengesau’s case, saying he had not paid his fines “in accordance with the Court-ordered payment plan entered on August 21, 2021.”
In the motion, OSP requests hearing as to “why defendant’s nonpayment of fines should not be treated as contumacious.”
According to OSP, the order issued by the court required that “ “payments shall be made on a monthly basis in installments of not less than $3,020.00 a month payable on the 20th of each month to the Clerk of Court.”
As of the date of the filing, it stated that the defendant owed “$45,300 but had paid only $23,480.
On October 27, 2022, according to a copy of the filing in court, the defendant paid $21,800 to bring his account to current and filed the motion to dismiss the ROP’s motion for the second hearing.
According to Remengesau, he has been paying no less than $1,000 per month and has been liquidating assets to clear the balance before the August 2025 date that the court gave him to pay off the fine.
The case relates to the two Ethics Code violations he was charged with for failing to disclose his interest in a property in 2002 and 2003. The amount of the fine he was charged was $156,400, which was the maximum fine per year it wasn’t reported times the number of years it wasn’t paid.
Special Prosecutor April Dawn Cripps said that the case will proceed as scheduled for November 8, 2022, at 2:30 p.m. in Courtroom 101, Trial Division, Palau Supreme Court, Koror, Palau.