As a baby-faced entrepreneur, Kaleil Isaza Tuzman once symbolized the tech industry’s meteoric meltdown. Just years out of Harvard College and a stint at Goldman Sachs, he launched an Internet company only to see it collapse three years later.
Today, he finds himself in a South American maximum-security prison, begging to return to the U.S to face securities fraud charges that could send him to an American jail cell for as long as 20 years. For now, he shares a 90-square-foot cell with an accused murderer and a drug trafficker in Patio 16, a wing of the Colombian prison reserved for often-violent defendants.
Just how Isaza Tuzman, a 44-year-old U.S. citizen, ended up there is now the subject of a legal fight in New York. He was arrested in September in Colombia at the request of U.S. prosecutors after he was indicted for allegedly cheating investors in mobile-video company KIT Digital Inc. They said he was a risk to flee and now needs to go through Colombia’s extradition proceedings.
His lawyers, Reed Brodsky and Avi Weitzman, say in court filings that he’s in “life-threatening conditions” at La Picota prison, a lockup in Bogota decried by the nation’s inspector general for its harsh conditions. And they argue that the arrest of a non-violent, white-collar defendant on foreign soil marked an unprecedented departure for U.S. authorities.
Extradition Process
Isaza Tuzman, who is developing a luxury hotel in Colombia, was often in America, the lawyers said, most recently to attend his 20th reunion at Harvard in May. The government should have followed policy and waited for another visit to the U.S. to make the arrest, said the lawyers, both former U.S. prosecutors.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe in Manhattan will hear arguments on Isaza Tuzman’s motion asking the government to drop the arrest warrant so he can circumvent the Colombian extradition process. He would then promise to return immediately to the U.S. to face the charges. The Colombian extradition could take months longer, his lawyers say.
In a court filing, prosecutors said that dropping the arrest warrant now has no legal basis and would leave Isaza Tuzman free to travel anywhere. Isaza Tuzman was a flight risk, especially to the United Arab Emirates where he had retained an attorney who herself had fled U.S. charges years ago, they said.
Hardly Novel
And prosecutors insisted his arrest in Colombia was hardly novel or meant as a signal to non-violent offenders. About a dozen U.S. citizens, including “numerous white-collar defendants,” have been held at La Picota in recent years -- many in Patio 16 -- pending extradition, they wrote. In any case, they said the U.S. has made robust efforts to have Isaza Tuzman transferred away from “his alleged tormentors” even while casting doubt on his claims.