By Tom DoggettPosted 2008/08/08 at 11:36 am EDT
WASHINGTON, Aug. 8, 2008 (Reuters) — After 12 years of litigation, a federal judge rejected claims that the government owed American Indians $47 billion for mismanaging their money held in a special trust fund, but ruled they were owed less than 1 percent of the amount sought.
The U.S. Interior Department was sued for mishandling the revenue in the Indian trust fund going back to 1887. The trust includes 10 million acres of land owned by individual Indians and 46 million acres belonging to Indian tribes.
On this lands, the department manages more than 100,000 leases and the money they generate from mineral mining, oil and gas drilling, timber, livestock grazing, recreational and agricultural uses are deposited into the trust. That money is disbursed by the department to individuals and tribes.
U.S. District Court Judge Robertson ruled on Thursday that the model used to estimate how much money was withheld by the government was faulty because it "did not make use of the best available evidence and did not make fair or reasonable comparisons of data."
Robertson said the there was no evidence of the "prodigious pilfering of assets from within the trust system" that the Indian plaintiffs had claimed and that they failed to prove the government used any money from the fund for its own benefit.
Instead, the judge accepted the Interior Department's position that it was 99 percent confident that no more than $455.6 million was missing from the trust fund.
"This statement has the character of an admission -- by responsible civil servants -- that there are limits to what can be confidently stated with respect to the (trust fund), and that a history of accounting nonfeasance makes such a substantial error plausible," Robertson wrote in his ruling.
Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff in the class action lawsuit against the government and a member of Montana's Blackfeet tribe, said she was disappointed by the ruling and her lawyers would consider whether to appeal the decision.
"We believe we presented a strong, compelling case that individual Indian trust beneficiaries are entitled to much more than the government's admitted mismanagement of our trust monies over the past 120 years," she said.
The case is not over yet, because the judge said another hearing will determine how the missing money should be restored and allocated.
The Interior Department said it looked forward to working "with the court, the Congress, and the plaintiffs to bring the case to final closure."
(Reporting by Tom Doggett; editing by Mohammad Zargham)
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