RALEIGH, N.C. – March 23, 2017 – PRLog — Intersal, Inc., the Florida-based company which found the wreck of Blackbeard the Pirate’s flagship Queen Anne’s Revenge (“QAR”) in 1996 at Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, has filed complaints with the North Carolina Ethics Commission against two North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (“DNCR”) employees for violations of North Carolina’s conflict of interest and ethics laws, connected to their use of non-profit corporations to interfere with Intersal’s rights as Discoverer of QAR under the QAR Settlement Agreement.
The complaints specify that DNCR Deputy Secretary Kevin Cherry, as Secretary & Treasurer of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association, solicited funds to be used for a commercial tour of QAR artifacts and the making of QAR artifact replicas, which DNCR planned without the collaboration or involvement of its QAR Settlement Agreement contractual partners. Mr. Cherry also supervised NC Underwater Archaeology Branch Director John Morris, who served as Treasurer of the non-profit Friends of QAR (“FoQAR”), and whose wife received $10,000 as part of a FoQAR contract which also interfered with Intersal’s QAR rights. After Intersal included FoQAR as defendants in ongoing legal action against DNCR, for repeated interference with the QAR Settlement Agreement, FoQAR filed dissolution paperwork in March of 2016.
Intersal recently filed its Second Amended Complaint in North Carolina Superior Court, for breach of and interference with the QAR Settlement Agreement contract by DNCR and FoQAR (File No. 15-CvS-9995). In a letter sent today to the NC Department of Justice, Intersal demanded DNCR recognize its proposed tour of QAR Artifacts as a collaborative commercial opportunity under the QAR Settlement Agreement; and advised that due to Mr. Cherry and DNCR’s recent actions, the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association may be added a defendant alongside FoQAR (as may the Historic Bath Foundation, with whom DNCR recently negotiated and executed a QAR Project related agreement, without consultation of the QAR Project partners).
Contact
John Masters
[email protected]