FORMER Century National boss Don Crawford yesterday blamed orchestrated threats against his life for his exile in the United States since 1996. Crawford alleged that he was cheated and fraudulently robbed of all his assets, and forced into involuntary exile because of the threats.

“By all intents and purposes, were it not for God, I would have been dead a long time ago. That was the obvious intent of the five motorcycle gunmen, all dressed in black, who stormed my house,” Crawford told the Finsac Commission of Enquiry about an alleged 1996 attack on his home in Kingston.

The reasons for the 1990s financial sector meltdown are at the core of the enquiry at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston.

Crawford made his appearance before the commission via videoconferencing from his current home in Georgia in the United States.

Crawford also suggested that there could have been an intent to destroy his family through a 1996 Mareva Injunction, which froze all personal and business assets of his family without any provision for living and legal expenses.

He said that, except for a few months when under a variation of the Order he was allowed J$100,000 per month, he was forced to exhaust all his family’s resources in the first year of exile, with his legal expenses alone exceeding US$1.2 million.

“I spent the next 10 years borrowing from friends, until their generosity and resources were themselves depleted. Then I spent the last four living like an urchin, begging and crawling on my knees to stay in my family house, although I cannot pay the mortgage, enduring biting cold in winter and frying in the scorching heat in summer, because I cannot afford to pay for the heat in winter nor the air-condition in summer,” Crawford told the commission.

He noted that, while he and his family lead marginalised lives in the United States, “political predators in Jamaica feast lavishly on the products of the blood, sweat and tears of my entire family”.

Crawford also accused the Commission of Enquiry of failing to support his efforts to appear before it to give his side of the story.

“One would have thought that in the interest of transparency and even a vague attempt at a display of justice, that no expense would have been too great to have Jamaica and the world at last hear Don Crawford’s truth. But that has not been the case,” he said.

He said that while millions were being spent on the enquiry, the commission refused to foot the US$3,000 – US$5,000 bill for him to come to Jamaica to appear in person, forcing him to scrape funds to pay for his videoconferencing appearance.

The enquiry is scheduled to resume on June 21 but, if there is a need for Crawford to re-appear before then, it will be accommodated, Commission Chairman Worrick Bogle said.