The Minister of Finance has failed in his bid to provide the United States with information about a Bermuda-based company and its owner, who has been convicted of fraud and tax evasion in the US, because Government lawyers submitted papers too late.

The Minister had originally received an appeal for information from the United States in February 2000 on Almon Glenn Braswell, Gero Vita International Inc and G.B. Data Systems.

Mr. Brasswell was sentenced to three years in prison in the United States on charges of making false claims about the effectiveness of a baldness treatment but pardoned by President Bill Clinton before he left office.

Mr. Braswell was pardoned in January for a 1983 mail fraud conviction stemming from his sale of a product that he falsely claimed cured baldness. He was convicted of fraud, perjury and tax evasion.

The request for help from Bermuda from the US centred on allegations that he used a Bermuda-based shell corporation as part of an elaborate tax evasion scheme.

The appeal for information was stopped in its tracks in November 2000 when Mr Braswell, of Gero Vita International Inc and G.B. Data systems said that the method through which the IRS became interested in their operations was tainted.

They claimed at the time that information revealed to the IRS by two former employees of GB Data Systems was privileged and subject to lawyer/client confidentiality.

And they contended as such the Minister of Finance should not have issued notices under the USA-Bermuda Tax Convention Act, and the court action halted the release of information to the IRS.

The information was requested because Bermuda has a tax treaty with the the US by which it has agreed to furnish US authorities with information that may help them in their efforts to combat tax evasion.

Another appeal for information was made in February 2001, but according to Bermuda Supreme Court documents a decision was made on May 18, 2001 in favour of Mr. Braswell and the other two defendants.

But the Minister of Finance's lawyers did not file a motion to appeal or a motion for intent to appeal in the proper manner and ran out of time in which to legally appeal the case.

The intended appeal was thrown out by Justice Vincent Mirabux because the Minister's lawyers had not filed the application within the time span allowed by law, had not put forward "good and sustainable reasons" for not putting forward an appeal in the allowed time

He said in his written judgement: "I rule that the excuses given are not good and substantial reasons to explaining why no application was made sooner than now to enlarge (extend) time." Justice Mirabux also said that the length of delay was "inordinate".

He added: "In the circumstances I think that the interests of justice are not served in granting the application to enlarge time."

Mr. Braswell, who allegedly paid Clinton's brother-in-law to press for his pardon, is the owner of GB Data, the holding company for at least ten businesses selling a wide range of dietary supplements.