Fourth in a series

Hamilton, Bermuda (special) -- Eli Lynn, a high school senior, remembers when there were so few Jewish teenagers that "I consisted of a third of the teenagers my age who were Jewish."

Now things have changed. One teenager moved from the island two months ago. "So now I am half--it's just me and one other guy" who is a classmate and a friend, he said.

In this very Christian country, he added, "people would come up to me and say 'even though you are Jewish, Jesus loves you' -- comments like that. People have made comments that have been sort of degrading, but in a joking manner, about laundering money or being cheap." There have been times when acquaintances at school have said "go launder me some money" or "go lanuder me a pencil," the high school senior said

SAUL FROOMKIN.

His mother, Diana Lynn, a lay leader of Bermuda's tiny Jewish community, commented that other Bermudians occasionally will use phrases like "'Jew you down' -- I've heard people say that."

Jews unfairly have had to endure stereotypes about being tight or crooked with money through the centuries. What makes the variation about "laundering money" particularly ironic in Bermuda is that this nation's top authority on the subject of combatting money laundering is, in fact, a Jew -- Bermuda's former attorney general Saul M. Froomkin. 

Not only is Froomkin the man who wrote many of Bermuda's laws intended to prevent people from mixing illegal proceeds into the financial stream of legitimate enterprise, he also is chairman of an international symposium that meets every year to further the fight against such economic crimes.

Interviewed at his private law offices, Froomkin said this year's 17th annual International Symposium on Economic Crime in Cambridge, England, drew "something like 750 people from 73 different countries." Froomkin served as a delegate at the first year's meeting, and has chaired the symposium for all 16 years thereafter.

Recently he was invited to the People's Republic of China to deliver a paper on fighting corruption.

"I like to think that I know something about the area of international crime and try to keep up with it, and help where I can," the former attorney general said.

Froomkin was serving as the head of criminal prosecutions for the Canadian federal government when he was hired by Bermuda originally to serve as its solicitor general.

The Canadian-born Froomkin said that before he arrived in the country in January of 1978, "Bermuda was thrown into the basket by the U.S. government authorities with all the Caribbean countries as being tax havens of the worst sort, even though we are not in the Caribbean.

"I had a lot of friends in the U.S. government that I dealt with over the years, so I went about trying to get them to focus on Bermuda as a separate entity and to realize that not only weren't we in the Caribbean, but we weren't a bad jurisdiction and in fact we were very clean."

Under Froomkin's constant prompting, American government officials began to realize that Bermuda, located about 600 miles off the coast of North Carolina, is not in the Caribbean but instead is in the Sargasso Sea.

And on the more substantive issue, "it took a couple of years, but after a few years, we no longer were thrown in the same basket as some of what I call the 'scoundrel jurisdictions' south of us," Froomkin said. 

Froomkin said he also set about trying to persuade the governments of other countries that "international economic crime" was a serious matter they needed to confront.

"When some of my colleagues from abroad and I first started talking about international economic crime -- money laundering -- we were thought as nut cases," Froomkin declared. "Nobody cared. Nobody was interested. It was no big thing. Well, of course, it has become a very sexy issue in recent years, as a result of which everyone is interested in it.

"I am happy to say that Bermuda's reputation remains one of the cleanest in the world," Froomkin said, not only as a result of his three years as solicitor general and ten as attorney general but also because "those who came after have been working very hard to make sure that we don't get the bad business, we don't get the scandals. We don't want the narco dollars coming through here; we don't want the money launderers coming in here."

Among the steps taken in Bermuda was a decision by its banks "that they would not accept large sums of cash from people who were not regular customers," Froomkin said. 

"That is to say, if you were a supermarket and you regularly brought in $10,000-$15,000 worth of cash, day in and day out, it would be accepted. But if you were a stranger coming in off the street with a suitcase full of U.S. dollars, there would be a lot of serious questions asked at very high levels and unless you had a proper explanation for carrying around all this cash, the money would not be accepted."

In the past, "this was not the case," Froomkin said. "In fact, we got involved--before I came--with the 'pizza connection' where a couple of million dollars in cash was laundered through Bermuda, but that was in the 1970s and very early on when nobody, anywhere, was really looking at large cash transactions."

When Froomkin came to Bermuda, he made no secret that he was a Jew -- unlike a Puisne Judge of Bermuda's Supreme Court, Hector Barcillon, whom no one had known was Jewish until he mentioned it in a letter to the editor he wrote in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War in Israel.

"I brought an Old Testament, and swore on the Old Testament," Froomkin said. "I am not sure that was known at the time, but I did it as a matter of conscience. Unfortunately or otherwise I am not a great practicing Jew, but I just felt morally that I wanted to do it my way."

The oath itself is religiously neutral, Froomkin said. "I think it says 'I swear by Almighty God that I shall well and truly serve .... etcetera ... and I knew which God I was talking to."

Froomkin said he occasionally attends services with Bermuda's Jewish community, which numbers about 110 individuals. "Yom Kippur I attended services and the break-the-fast," he said. 

"I was away for Rosh Hashanah. Unfortunately, I haven't been as active in the community as I would like to be because of other pressures, but I try to support it when and where I can," he said. "If I am needed, I am there."

Froomkin like his father was born in Winnipeg. He received both his bachelor's of law degree in 1960 and a master's of laws degree in 1965 from the University of Manitoba. He practiced principally in Winnipeg before joining the Canadian government in 1969. He was appointed in 1975 as director of criminal law in the Canada' Department of Justice.

"In 1977 there was an advertisement in the Toronto Globe & Mail looking for a crown council in Bermuda, and at that stage my best friend from Jamaica whom I had fished with for 20 years had moved to Bermuda," Froomkin said, relishing the story as he might one of his fine cigars.

"I thought especially in November in 1977 that this would be a great idea. The weather was terrible in Ottawa and I knew that Bermuda was reasonably warm. So I thought it would be great to go down and have a couple of years in Bermuda where it was warm, and so I made an application, sent it in, and I got a formal acknowledgment, and then I got a letter saying that I was over-qualified, but that the solicitor general had just been appointed chief justice, so would I be interested in being solicitor general? And I thought well, why not? So I called the then attorney general in Bermuda, and said, 'send me a ticket; I will come down and we will look at each other .... If we like what we see we will make a deal.'

"So I came down in December of, 77, had a wonderful weekend fishing with my buddy, and had my interviews on Monday," Froomkin continued. "Tuesday they offered me the job, and I went back on Wednesday and tried to resign from the Canadian government."

The then deputy minister of the Department of Justice in Canada urged Froomkin not to quit but instead to agree to be loaned to Bermuda by Canada. 

"The Canadian government continued to pay my salary and benefits and the Bermuda government paid whatever benefits and salaries there were back to the Canadian government, which meant that the Canadian government ended up making a profit on me!" Froomkin said.

As Froomkin was completing three years as solicitor general, "the then attorney general decided not to stay on and the government asked me if I was interested in staying on as attorney general. Fishing had been great, so I said sure. I severed my ties with the Canadian government then, and in Juanuary 1981 I became attorney general and was attorney general for 10 years until January 1991."

As attorney general, he said, his status was that of an "independent appointment, under the constitution, by the governor. You were completely independent of (locally elected) government; you couldn't be dismissed for anything except gross misconduct, etcetera, so you were completely a totally independent attorney general."

Recently, he said, "the provisions have been amended so that they now have a political attorney general," appointed by the Premier. "The ten years that I was there it was apolitical and you weren't elected."

Being attorney general of Bermuda means being the chief law enforcement officer in "a tiny place, 22 square miles, 60-odd thousand people," Froomkin said. "One would think 'what possibly could be challenging there?' But one has to bear in mind that as small as it is, it is still a nation, a country, with the same problems any other country has. So there are really some very challenging issues that have arisen and continue to arise."

Froomkin said he did not come to Bermuda with preconceived ideas, but "from time to time if I could rely on my experience in Canada, I would apply it. For example, the drinking and driving legislation. I recommended that we look at Canadian legislation because it was modern, I knew it was effective and there was lots of case law on it. And eventually we adopted the Canadian provisions."

After completing his time as attorney general, Froomkin was appointed as chairman of a task force on child abuse. "I recommended that in respect of sexual offenses -- rape, indecent assault -- that we adopt not only the Canadian nomenclature but also the Canadian jurisprudence, again because I felt that it worked well and there was a body of law to rely on. 

"From time to time, when something came up, if I thought the Canadian experience was relevant and helpful I would recommend its use," Froomkin added. "On other occasions, we might adopt the Australian provisions."

As Froomkin brought Canadian legal customs and usage to Bermuda, it was only proper that this island nation reciprocated.

The moment Froomkin steps from behind his desk to greet you, you notice that he is clad in a jacket and a tie as well as in Bermuda shorts -- the normal attire for a professional man here.