USVI: Cough it up

May 27, 2004 - Virgin Islands businessman Jeffrey Prosser, sole owner of Innovative Communication Corp. and a variety of other companies including the Virgin Islands Daily News and Virgin Islands Community Bank, has been ordered, along with ICC and two other members of Innovative's board of directors, to pay what could end up amounting to more than $100 million to former stockholders of his company Emerging Communications Inc.

A Delaware judge issued the order after finding that Prosser and the two board members knowingly undervalued the price of Emerging stock when Prosser bought out the company's minority shareholders in 1998. The two directors were responsible for overseeing the stock valuation and privatization on behalf of Emerging Communications' minority stockholders when the publicly traded company went private. The judge found them and Prosser guilty of neglecting their fiduciary duties to those stockholders.

In what the court called a "scheme to force out Emerging Communications minority shareholders," Prosser also was found guilty of improperly benefitting not only from the stock but from the privatization itself.