A lawyer who worked in Bermuda for the best part of 20 years failed in his attempt to have references to his consultancy firm struck out of the largest criminal tax evasion prosecution in United States history.

Evatt Tamine, who was called to the Bar here in 1999 and is the founder and director of Tangarra Consultants, was a key witness in the US Department of Justice’s case against car dealership software billionaire Robert T Brockman.

He was also embroiled in civil litigation here regarding the Bermudian-based multibillion-dollar A Eugene Brockman Charitable Trust and was accused by the plaintiffs in those proceedings of “wrongfully” taking more than $28 million linked to the trust.

He denied the allegation, but was ordered to pay back the money.

Mr Brockman stood criminally accused of a “decades-long scheme” to conceal about $2 billion in investment income from the US Internal Revenue Service.

He denied all 39 charges against him, which included tax evasion, wire fraud, money laundering and other offences. He died last August, aged 81, before standing trial.

The case, involving secret bank accounts here and in Switzerland and a charitable foundation with estimated assets of $6 billion, was described by prosecutors as the “largest ever tax charge against an individual in the United States”.

Mr Tamine, who is married to Bermudian lawyer Sophie Tod, worked for Mr Brockman from 2001 until 2018, managing various offshore entities for him for most of that time.

The Australian lawyer also set up and managed Tangarra Consultants, an exempt company.

A May 6, 2022 ruling concerning the civil litigation noted that Tangarra was wholly owned by Mr Tamine.

Tangarra was incorporated by him in July 2003 so it could formally employ him and he could obtain a work permit, according to an affidavit he filed in relation to the civil litigation.

Tangarra’s registered office was on Hidden Lane, Pembroke, at a property which Mr Tamine and Ms Tod bought in 2010 and where they lived with their children.

Detectives here, co-operating with the DoJ and the IRS, raided the Hidden Lane address in Fairylands, in September 2018, while Mr Tamine and family were in Britain.

Evidence gathered by the Bermuda Police Service’s Financial Crime Unit led to the charges eventually being laid against Mr Brockman in October 2020, after Mr Tamine gave evidence before a Grand Jury.

A petition filed by Mr Tamine’s lawyers with the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas in August 2021 said: “Notably, Tangarra, through its director, is a co-operating witness in the [US] Government’s case against Brockman.

“Thus far, Tangarra’s co-operation includes providing statements and many Tangarra documents to the Government, as the Government acknowledges …”

The 42-page indictment did not name Mr Tamine.

It made 11 references to Tangarra Consultants and mentioned a person referred to as “Individual One” 143 times.

Prosecutors said Tangarra was “organised, formed and managed by Individual One”, but alleged that it was “controlled by Brockman”.

They claimed Mr Brockman engaged in a fraudulent scheme to obtain about $67.8 million in debt securities in the Ohio-based software company of which he was CEO, without disclosing it to the authorities as he was required to do.

He was accused of using Tangarra and a Nevis-based corporation called Edge to purchase the debt.

The petition filed with the Southern District of Texas court to have Tangarra’s name struck out of the indictment was opposed by the US Government.

Lawyers for the US Government said: “The indictment does not claim that Tangarra did anything. On the contrary, each of these paragraphs alleges that [Mr Brockman], or his agent, used Tangarra to accomplish his objectives.

“That is, where Tangarra is mentioned in the indictment it is as an instrumentality of [Mr Brockman’s] conduct and not as an independent agent.

“Indeed, the indictment specifically alleges that Tangarra, Edge and Individual One were controlled by [the] defendant.”

Tangarra’s lawyers filed a reply which included as an exhibit an e-mail thread marked “Confidential – Evatt Tamine/Edge” between one of Tangarra’s lawyers and a DoJ attorney.

In the thread, Paul Rauser, of Aegis Law Group, asked the DoJ lawyer for the “docs that the Government believes indicate that Tangarra was a purchaser of debt”.

The DoJ lawyer replied: “We have researched this and Tangarra was not a purchaser of debt. The name appears on some Deutsche Bank documents and we misunderstood.”

The August 17, 2021 court reply filed on behalf of Tangarra accused the US Government of “publicly accusing an uncharged third party of wrongdoing in a criminal proceeding”.

It said: “The allegations against Tangarra in the Brockman indictment have already prejudiced [the] petitioner and will continue to do so.”

Tangarra’s lawyers asked the court for an order striking all references to Tangarra and its director from the indictment and from the government opposition to the petition, as well as a public order declaring that Tangarra’s rights were violated.

But the references remained on the indictment, and the unredacted government opposition remained on the file and available online.

Lawyers for Mr Brockman claimed he was unable to stand trial because of dementia, but prosecutors alleged he was faking.

At a Zoom hearing in September 2021, US Judge George C Hanks refused motions from Mr Brockman’s lawyers to have neutral court-designated experts appointed to determine if he was mentally competent to stand trial.

The judge also denied Mr Brockman’s motion to exclude the testimony of three government experts who concluded he did not have dementia.

After a competency hearing in November 2021, the judge ruled that Mr Brockman could stand trial but he died before the trial could take place.

Mr Tamine moved to East Sussex, England, with his family.

He did not respond to a request for comment before this article was first published in September 2021.

• This article was first published on September 16, 2021. It has been edited to remove references to and content from an affidavit sworn in 2020 by Evatt Tamine, which is the subject of a Supreme Court injunction issued against Bermuda Press (Holdings) Ltd, The Royal Gazette’s parent company, in September 2021. The Gazette is seeking to have the gag order lifted in the Court of Appeal, with judgment pending.