Davidson Charlemagne, left, with legal counsel David J. Cattie, at the V.I. District Court on St. Croix on Thursday, June 20, 2024. By. ERNICE GILBERT, V.I. CONSORTIUM
The trial of David and Sasha Charlemange has been pushed back to sometime after December 1, following an order from U.S. Magistrate Emile Henderson III.
The Charlemagnes were arrested in mid-June, accused of orchestrating a $4 million fraud against Housing and Urban Development involving the storage and management of wood that was earmarked for hurricane relief. Mr. Charlemagne, the Department of Education Director of Maintenance, and his wife, were charged with government program fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracy alongside former Virgin Islands Housing Finance Authority Chief Operating Officer Darin Richardson. All three pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The trio is accused of orchestrating a scheme where Mr. Charlemagne was profiting off the storage of the wood as his company, D&S Trucking, would collect vastly inflated annual fees from VIHFA for the work. However, at the same time, the wood was being stored rent-free at the disused Alexander Henderson Elementary School, property of the Department of Education, where Mr. Charlemagne was employed.
Trial was initially scheduled to begin on August 5, however following a motion from defense attorneys to extend the trial date to “sometime after December 1, 2024 in order to review the voluminous discovery in this case and conduct an independent investigation into the allegations in the indictment,” Judge Henderson granted the request.
The case will now be scheduled for the court’s September 16 calendar call, where a new schedule for pre-trial motions and the commencement of trial will be set.
