Justice Iain Morley has dismissed an application filed on behalf of convicted drug smuggler Dante Tagliaventi to declare that the 2016 forfeiture of his assets was invalid.
Former businessman Tagliaventi’s assets were forfeited to the Crown in July 2016 following a successful application in the High Court.
Years later, the businessman’s lawyer Hugh Marshall filed a constitutional motion saying that the forfeiture was invalid because the process used to forfeit his properties was not ‘due process’.
But on Tuesday, Justice Iain Morley declared that the application lacked merit.
Tagliaventi was arrested by US law enforcement officers in May 2012. He was subsequently indicted and convicted in 2015 for conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States and was sentenced to 87 months in prison.
The ONDCP, having obtained a freeze order in September 2013, applied to the court for an order forfeiting to the Crown all of Tagliaventi’s frozen property located in Antigua and Barbuda.
The Italian operated two businesses in Heritage Quay, Timeless Treasures and Millennium, which were closed in 2011 after several years of operation.
In December 2011 he announced a third business, Luxury Brands, would close in May that year, at the end of the tourist season.