The reclusive 78-year-old Mr Brockman made his fortune supplying software and services to the automotive industry. In 2006 he purchased rival company Reynolds and Reynolds for $US2.8 billion.
That company – still privately owned by Mr Brockman – has its headquarters in Ohio with offices in Texas, where Mr Brockman lives.
In 2013 Mr Brockman shot to prominence with the announcement that the A. Eugene Brockman Charitable Trust (started by his late father in 1981) was donating $250 million to a tiny liberal arts college in rural Kentucky.
At the time Mr Tamine was quoted saying that the donation, one of the country's largest ever, was in recognition of Mr Brockman Snr's appreciation of "the tremendous impact" Centre College had on his son Bob whose "drive and ambition were empowered" by his two-year experience there.
Embarrassingly for the college, two months later it had to announce that the donation was not going ahead as it had been contingent on a business deal that had not yet been completed.
"There were all sorts of things we didn't anticipate and couldn't address in time," said the trustee Mr Tamine.
Mr Brockman has been a major donor to Republican and conservative causes.
Three separate companies, all with the same post-office box in Ohio, each donated $333,333 to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.
Described as a tough, hard-nosed businessman who prefers to litigate than negotiate, Mr Brockman in 2014 launched an unsuccessful lawsuit in the Texas Supreme court to uncover the identity of "Trooper" – a blogger who had been posting critical comments about the billionaire.
According to court documents, the blogger said Mr Brockman was a "lunatic" and a "crook" and likened him to Bernie Madoff, who was jailed in 2009 for running the biggest Ponzi scheme in US history. The court rejected his efforts to unmask "Trooper".
Of late Mr Brockman's legal team appears to be hitting some hurdles in Bermuda.
On March 26 Chief Justice Narinder Hargun handed down two related judgments. The first related to the control of SJTC which the court heard was the corporate trustee administering "a very valuable trust, the A. Eugene Brockman Charitable Trust". The dispute centred on the appointment of two new directors.
In an ex parte hearing in November, at which Mr Tamine was not present, lawyers for SJTC accused him of "stealing trust assets of the value of more than $US20 million". They feared the appointment of the two new directors was to "derail" any investigation into Mr Tamine's activities, the court heard.
Mr Tamine's lawyers claimed the proceedings were designed to discourage him from assisting the US tax probe into Mr Brockman.
His US attorney Michael Padula filed an affidavit saying that, as a "co-operating witness", Mr Tamine was aware that the "tax and money laundering investigation" by the DOJ and the US Internal Revenue Service suggested the suspected tax evasion by Mr Brockman was "more than US$2 billion of unreported gains".
The judge noted Mr Padula's belief that if the matter proceeds to trial "it will be one of the largest tax evasion cases by individuals in US history".
Although Mr Tamine had resigned as a director of SJTC shortly after his house was raided, the trust is wholly owned by his company Cabarita – which late last year appointed two of his associates as directors of SJTC.
One of the new directors is solicitor Glenn Ferguson, a past president of the Queensland Law Society, whose current business interests include Global Meth Solutions, a device for landlords to tell if their property is being used as a drug den.
The other is James Watlington, a barrister of 40-years' experience in Bermuda. SJTC's lawyers accused Mr Tamine of appointing the two directors to "hijack" the investigations into his activities or to glean SJTC's litigation strategy.
The third director of SJTC, James Gilbert, filed an affidavit in which he expressed concern that if he was outvoted by the two new directors there was "extreme" danger they could have "access to the trust funds."
In a judgment partially redacted because of an unspecified confidentiality order, Judge Hargun ruled in Mr Tamine's favour and found that Mr Ferguson and Mr Watlington had been validly appointed in October 2019, and that there was no suggestion they had colluded with Mr Tamine or had done anything dishonest or improper. He found that when SJTC took action to have their appointments overturned, it had done so without proper authority.
Meanwhile in a separate judgment also delivered on March 26 and also in Mr Tamine's favour, Judge Hargun was critical of the attempts by lawyers for Mr Brockman's charitable trust to stop the Bermudan police from reviewing the seized documents. Given that it has been nearly two years since the DOJ request was received by the Bermuda authorities, the judge directed that the inspection of the seized material should be undertaken "expeditiously."
Mr Tamine and Mr Brockman declined to comment. The Herald sought comment from Mr Ferguson.
Editor’s Note: Paragraph 15 of the Bermuda Supreme Court Judgment was subsequently unredacted to record that the United States Department of Justice submitted to the Court that the allegation of theft against Mr Tamine by Brockman was an attempt to interfere with its investigation.
