Phil Nugent Sues To Break Up His Partnership As GEECF Heads South

Phil Nugent, the man who claims to have introduced Emeka Offor to Sao Tome and who was tied in a recent Barron's Weekly article to attorney Donald Mintmire, a Palm Beach stock promoter arrested by IRS officials last May, claims in a letter to ERHC On The Move that he filed suit May 9 in Federal Court to break up his partnership with the company that has burned through $210 million in a matter of months and seen its share price drop from a recent high of $2.88 to $0.40.

The New Orleans-based oilman also threatened to sue ERHC On The Move for intimating he had a management or equity role in the company. ERHC On The Move mistakenly reported that Nugent "is battling to save his newest enterprise, Global Environmental Energy Corp." In fact, he is apparently fighting to undo his relationship with it after former Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds bailed out of the company,as posted here on May 14. Our headline correctly said he "faces issues" with the company.

In a letter posted in our Comments section and then reprinted last week, Nugent's lawyers says, "For you to flatly state that Mr. Nugent or his company, ERHC, has any management or ownership interest in Global Environmental, a company that is described as insolvent and facing numerous punitive damage and director/investor actions against it, as well as possible tax liability actions, is not only patently libelous but could be characterized as an intentionally tortuous act... ."

Nugent's lawyer, Cameron Gamble, apparently cannot spell "tortious" correctly. The letter was posted as received and is still available below.

The Barron's article on GEECF linked Nugent to a Palm Beach lawyer who was convicted of stock fraud and lying to the Securities Exchange Commission, saying that Nugent and another ERHC Energy investor were part of the same cast of characters who have invested in ERHC Energy.

Today, when we suggested that his problems with GEECF as evidenced by the lawsuit he claims to have filed may have led to substantial losses that could require him to sell his ERHC Energy holdings, someone posted the letter again, this time with a valid local address and signed by an apparent lawyer, Cameron Gamble. No hard copy of the letter has been sent to us, That response reinforces the possibility we suggested that Nugent himself is behind the selling that has continually depressed the share price.

Nugent had earlier thanked ERHC On The Move for an article that distanced him and GEECF from ERHC Energy, and had instructed his son, lawyer Phil Nugent, Jr., of New Orleans, to ask if we would be interested in co-authoring a book with the elder Nugent and a Cambridge, Mass.-based academic writer, Daniel Yergin, on the history of his role in ERHC Energy (formerly Environmental Remediation Holdings Corp.), and sent us a small box of pecan pralines in gratitude.

We are unsure what turned him against us, but we now intend to publicize his relationship with GEECF and the attendant lawsuit at every opportunity.

Here is a portion of a year-old Mintmire story from a Florida newspaper:

Palm Beach Lawyer Arrested In Alleged Citrus-Stock Scam

POSTED: 12:27 pm EDT May 21, 2004
UPDATED: 12:42 pm EDT May 21, 2004

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- A Palm Beach attorney will be arraigned for his role in what the Internal Revenue Service is calling a citrus-stock scam.

Donald Mintmire was taken into custody on Thursday at his Palm Beach law office, where investigators took out more than a dozen boxes filled with records. Mintmire is accused of dissuading potential witnesses from telling the truth.

IRS officials said Skip Clements, the owner of Clements Citrus blew the whistle on Mintmire.

Clements made a fast climb in the citrus business with sales skills that convinced even the Chinese government to buy his orange juice.

"I mean, that's pretty damn good. So, there's a lot of people around town saying 'I want a piece of that dream,'" Clements said.

The dream vanished for Clements and investors a short time after the company went public. Money intended for the company's growth seemed to disappear.

Clements said he discovered what investors had never been told: that their Stocks couldn't be traded for two years and, it appeared the money had gone to the pockets of only a handful of executives.

"I was sick to my stomach," Clements said. "I didn't know what to do."

Clements, the company's founder and the man with his name on the label, filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors.

"I couldn't let (the executives) get away with it. I couldn't let them beat people that trusted me," Clements said.

Board members fired Clements for making the complaint. Clements aid Chief Financial Officer Joseph Rizzuti made sure Clements would not receive unemployment.

But federal officials listened to Clements' story and launched a grand jury investigation that lasted almost a year.

A grand jury will decided whether criminal activity led to the company's failure.

"The prosecutor told me once there was only one mistake these people made when they did this whole thing and I said 'What's that?' He said, 'They didn't count on you walking away,'" Clements said. "That paper trail will put them all in prison for a long time. That paper trail will prove they're all lying."