Atalig, girlfriend want former OIG special agent on witness list

Rota Mayor Efraim M. Atalig and his girlfriend, Evelyn Atalig, have asked the federal court to allow them add to a former special agent with the Office of the Inspector General to their list as an expert witness.

This developed as the jury trial of the Ataligs starts today, Tuesday, in the U.S. District Court for the NMI.

Efraim Atalig and Evelyn Atalig, through their counsels, David G. Banes and Steven P. Pixley, said that they intend to call Dr. Gregory Vecchi as a witness regarding interviewing techniques and reporting involved in a criminal investigation.

In their joint motion to amend the witness list that was filed in court Friday, Banes and Pixley said that Vecchi has 19 years of experience working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and has held various other professional positions related to criminal investigations, including as a special agent in the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice, investigating crimes involving federal employees.

The lawyers said that Vecchi, if called to the witness stand, is expected to testify about the coercive and misleading effect of the way the government’s investigative agents used when interviewing witnesses in this case.

They said Vecchi is going to testify as to the unlikelihood of having multiple witnesses in the same case disputing the accuracies of an investigative agent’s summaries of interviews.

Vecchi will also testify about an interview method used by the investigators in this case, including witness intimidation and videotaping only some but not all interviews.

Banes and Pixley acknowledged that they did not include Vecchi on their witness list last Tuesday. They stated that the need for Vecchi’s testimony arose only recently.

First, the defense counsel said, Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona denied defendants’ most recent motion for continuance just two days ago, which precluded any chance that Efraim Atalig may be able to call the co-defendants in the CNMI case to testify as to, among others, the inaccuracies of interview reports in this case.

Second, the lawyers said, the underlying materials prompting the need for the expert were provided only recently, and the defense team needed time to research and analyze them before they were able to determine an expert was necessary.

The lawyers said now is two weeks before the expected testimony of Vecchi and the prosecution can call its own expert witness even later, during its rebuttal.

In the federal court case, the charges against Efraim and Evelyn Atalig involve at least eight trips taken by the couple at different times in 2018 to Guam, Palau, the U.S. mainland, South Korea, and Saipan.

The Ataligs are being charged jointly with wire fraud, theft concerning programs involving federal funds, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and federal funds theft.

In the Superior Court case, the OAG charged Efraim Atalig and the seven co-defendants with misconduct in public office. The bench trial will be on March 20.