Eduard Link, a German who came to Bangkok to open Pala Gem & Mineral Mining (Thailand), amassed a pile of lawsuits in the US for charges such as failure to pay his bills and fraud.

            JewelSiam obtained copies of a dozen of these lawsuits from the Riverside County Courthouse in California, when asked about the lawsuits, Mr. Link responded in writing: “Your research is incomplete. There are in excess of 40 legal complaints, filed against four different corporations. I was acting president for these corporations during the six years these complaints were filed.”

            Mr. Link’s California companies named in the lawsuits include: the Gem Center, Chipstead Financial Services, Inc, Pala Mining Corporation and Pala Wholesalers.

“Any individual or company can file a legal complaint in California against anyone,” Mr. Link said. “However, the law says that everybody is innocent until found guilty in a court of law. I would like to go on record that I, Eduard Link, have never been convicted in any court of law in any country in the world for wrong doing.”

            The majority of the lawsuits were filed between 1977 to 1983, during “the second worst recession which hit the USA,” Mr. Link added. “We retained two full-time attorneys to deal with these matters.”

            Records filed in the Riverside County Courthouse show that one attorney dropped Eduard Link from his client list for nonpayment of his bills. A second attorney, Robert Coates, filed a lawsuit against Eduard Link and Pala Mining Co for $37,000 in unpaid fees. In one of Mr. Coates’ complaints filed at the courthouse, he stated: “I fear that Mr. Link is going to sell the businesses and leave the country. I also fear that Mr. Link is concealing assets of the company and transferring assets of the company out of the country so that he can evade his creditors.”

            Mr. Link spent time in Sri Lanka and Pakistan before coming to Thailand. In a 1992 interview with JewelSiam, he said that he is the president of Pala Gem and Mineral Mining (Canada), which he described as the parent company of Pala Gem and Mineral Mining (Thailand), a tourmaline trading office. Mr. Link requested that his name be left out of any articles about the company because, he said, “A lot of people hate me. They think I’m worse than Hitler.”

            In later statements to JewelSiam, Mr. Link denies that he has any position with Pala Gem and Mineral Mining (Thailand). “I would like to go on record that I hold no title or stock in this company and only act in an advisory capacity to its managing director, Thomas A Palmer.”

            Records filed in 1991 at the Thai Ministry of Commerce, however, show Eduard Link as one of the directors of Pala Gem and Mineral Mining (Thailand).

            Pala International, an exporter of gems in California, is in no way related to Eduard Link or Pala Gem and Mineral Mining (Thailand), said Josh Hall, vice president of Pala International.

            Mr. Link “has blatantly misrepresented himself as an agent for our firm of Pala International Inc,” Mr. Hall said. “He has left a trail of unpaid bills and discontented clients. He has caused our company untold damage with his fraudulent activities. This man is a parasite in the jewelry trade.”