Politics

Virgin Islands governor’s chief of staff resigns after seeking favorable tax breaks

Matthew Boyle Investigative Reporter
Font Size:

U.S. Virgin Islands Gov. John de Jongh’s chief of staff resigned on Monday after she and her husband were caught trying to use her position of influence to grant a company they created access to the territory’s lucrative tax breaks.

Pamela Berkowsky’s abrupt resignation comes less than a year after she took the job. She had served in the deputy chief of staff position since 2007, before taking the leadership role last October. In a statement announcing Berkowsky’s resignation, de Jongh did not say why she was suddenly leaving, but local new media outlets caught Berkowsky and her husband with the tax break scheme late last week.

Berkowsky’s husband is the manager of JaminDoodle Productions, LLC, which partnered with VI 4D, LLLP to quietly apply for Economic Development Corporation tax breaks to build a 4-D theater for Virgin Islands tourists. With the tax breaks, VI 4d with JaminDoodle Productions would hardly have had to pay taxes on what the money they made at the theater. Berkowsky was the settlor of the PBB Blind Trust — which is managed by an independent trustee and owns 49 percent of JaminDoodle.

Local bloggers at Crucians in Focus and DemManSay.com spotted the funny business. “[H]ey, when you’re the governor’s chief of staff and your husband is a doctor, leases and zoning and tax benefits are just more advantages of the chosen few,” Crucians in Focus wrote.

In his statement about Berkowsky’s resignation, de Jongh ignored that perceived impropriety.

“I thank Pam for her tremendous service to our territory over the past six years,” de Jongh said, “During which time she has been a devoted and hardworking public servant on behalf of the people of the Virgin Islands.”

Berkowsky’s resignation amid the tax break plan is the second scandal to rock de Jongh’s office. In February, The Daily Caller unearthed allegations that de Jongh accepted bribes in exchange for facilitating the sale of a telecommunications company to a politically embattled U.S. telecom cooperative.

According to TheDC’s source within U.S. Department of Justice, who served on a team put in place to arrest finance executives close to that telecommunications deal, de Jongh accepted part of at least $20 million in cash bribes that floated throughout the USVI government.

In addition to allegations of malfeasance on de Jongh’s part, TheDC’s DOJ source said the Justice Department had obtained sealed indictments of finance executives in connection with a years-long investigation into financial crimes that National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation (CFC) executives allegedly committed over the past ten or more years.

But, because TheDC’s source said two prosecutors on a team of more than 25 also accepted cash bribes, and five other prosecutors on the team were also compromised in some way other than being bribed, the DOJ never acted on the sealed indictments — even though arrest teams were in position and ready to move.

This scandal has tied in the highest levels of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Obama campaign bundler Marjorie Rawls Roberts — a tax attorney in the Virgin Islands — helped alleged and convicted financial criminals get tax breaks from that same program de Jongh’s now-former chief of staff was trying to dip into.

Roberts, who has pledged to raise between $100,000 and $200,000 for Obama’s 2012 campaign, helped recently convicted $7 billion Ponzi schemer R. Allen Stanford and executives from CFC with their tax break benefits applications.

The revelation that Roberts was helping such financial criminals forced DNC chairwoman and Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz to cancel at the last minute a scheduled fundraising trip to the Virgin Islands — where she was scheduled to make an appearance with Roberts earlier this year.

The tax breaks program — essentially where millionaires and billionaires go to avoid paying high taxes — has faced extra scrutiny of late. Alleged blood-diamond financiers have benefited from the Virgin Islands’ “Economic Development Corporation” program, as does convicted sex offender billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.

Billionaire Donald Sussman, the husband of Maine Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree, also gets Virgin Islands Economic Development Corporation tax breaks. And, as The Maine Wire has detailed, Sussman shares a lot of connections with many of the same characters aforementioned.

This latest spark — the governor’s chief of staff’s resignation — might be enough to start moving the case Attorney General Eric Holder allegedly stalled. In late May, TheDC’s DOJ source said the arrest teams that were previously called back were sent back out and told to wait for Holder’s word to make a move.

*Correction: This article was corrected after publication to correctly characterize Berkowsky’s role regarding the PBB Trust.

Follow Matthew on Twitter

 

 

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel