ST GEORGE‘S, Grenada: Two former Grenadian diplomats have now been indicted in the United States in relation to financial scandals. German national Eric Resteiner has become the second former diplomat of scandal-plagued Grenada in six months to be criminally indicted in the US. Resteiner, once a General Ambassador for Grenada, was indicted on 33 counts of wire fraud, 9 counts of mail fraud, and 18 counts of money laundering at the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts on March 24, 2004. According to press reports he has been in custody in Singapore since February of this year, and it is believed that the United States will seek his extradition. Resteiner, of Lyford Cay, in the Bahamas, and St Moritz, in Switzerland, is alleged to have defrauded 50 investors out of more than $30 million in a high-yield investment scam. As reported in Offshore Alert newsletter last month, the St Moritz villa was where Resteiner allegedly paid US$500,000 in cash to Grenada's Prime Minister Keith Mitchell on June 25, 2000 which was said to be partial payment for his appointment as an Ambassador, according to Resteiner's former Director of Security, Timothy Bass. Mitchell has admitted receiving cash from Resteiner at the meeting but he claims it was between US$12,000 and US$14,000 and was not a personal pay-off but was to cover the expenses of a Grenada delegation during a trip to promote the country. The Offshore Alert article has been followed up by several media organizations, including BBC World Service and the Associated Press, and led to Mitchell's government issuing a press release on May 10, 2004 denying the allegation. Mitchell's government has been plagued by allegations of corruption. Most or all of the more than 40 offshore banks that were licensed in Grenada since 1997 have collapsed, with most of them involved in overtly fraudulent activity which caused losses to foreign investors totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. Resteiner's indictment comes less than six months after another Grenada diplomat, Viktor Kozeny, was indicted in Manhattan on charges that he stole $182 million from 15 New York-based investment funds. Like Resteiner, Kozeny, who was born in the former Czechoslovakia, obtained a Grenada passport under its now-defunct economic citizenship program. Reprinted from Caribbean Net News caribbeannetnews.com