Opinion ID: 705082
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Principal Schemes

Text: 4 Of the numerous schemes by which defendants diverted estate assets and income, only the four principal ones will be outlined. 5 1. Share Transfer Scheme. Before Bob Marley died he, individually, and his three wholly-owned British Virgin Islands companies (BVI Companies), received royalty payments and income from various recording and publishing contracts. The BVI Companies as personal assets of Marley would have become estate property upon his death, resulting in the estate's receipt of all of the royalty income due him. But defendants advised Rita Marley to forge her husband's signature on three documents transferring the ownership of the BVI Companies from Bob Marley to herself. The documents were pre-dated to 1978 to make it appear that Marley had made these transfers during his lifetime, thereby excluding them from estate property. Steinberg signed the documents as a witness. 6 Ownership of the BVI Companies was then transferred to a Netherlands Antilles company known as Music Publishing Companies of Bob Marley, N.V. (the NV or Netherlands Antilles Company), whose sole shareholder was Rita Marley. Later the BVI Companies were liquidated, their royalty-producing assets transferred to the NV Company and then, in turn, to a wholly-owned Dutch subsidiary, Bob Marley Music B.V. (the BV or Dutch Company). The result was that various amounts of royalty and other income rightfully belonging to the BVI Companies--and indirectly to the estate--were funnelled between bank accounts in the names of Steinberg, the NV Company, and the BV Company and subsequently transferred into Rita Marley's personal account or into special escrow accounts set up in Zolt's name. 7 2. The Almo Scheme. This scheme is set forth in a letter dated December 29, 1981. It involved a signed agreement between Zolt, Steinberg, and Rita Marley not to report to the estate Bob Marley's personal share of royalty checks received from Almo Music, a music administration company for Bob Marley's song publishing activities. These royalty payments totalled about $1 million for the two years from the date of Marley's death until 1983. 8 3. The Island Assignment Scheme. Under this plan Rita Marley forged her late husband's signature on an assignment, again signed by Steinberg as a witness. The document, backdated to August 13, 1980, assigned Bob Marley's individual rights under contracts with Island Records to one of the BVI Companies, causing the royalties produced under those contracts to be transferred to the bank accounts of the NV Company and BV Company mentioned above, rather than to the estate. 9 4. The Rondor Scheme. This scheme was accomplished by assigning the assets of Tuff-Gong Productions Ltd. (Tuff-Gong Delaware), a company individually owned by Bob Marley that would have been estate property, to one of the BVI Companies. The assignment was dated as of November 30, 1980 but actually made after Bob Marley's death. It stated that the assets were transferred for the alleged consideration of $100,000, although the copyrights at issue generated millions in royalties from 1980 to 1985.