Alleging a serious and grave ethics violation and abuse of authority, an ethics complaint has been filed against Guam’s elected attorney general, Doug Moylan, and Special Assistant Attorney General Curtis Van De Veld. The person who filed it? Attorney Peter Santos, who is now calling for both lawyers to be disbarred.

An ethics complaint filed with the Office of Regulation Counsel. 

"I will announce from the top of Mt Lam Lam that I made an ethics complaint and this is the reason for my ethics complaint," said Santos, doing just that Friday. 

"It is the Attorney General. We’ve been trying to fight against this scheme that he has where he has a couple of handpicked defense attorneys he hired through contract to prosecute cases because he doesn’t have prosecutors to prosecute cases for him. We feel that it’s a very big issue when you have defense attorneys prosecuting because of the conflict, the access they have to cases and other things while they are still defense attorneys," he said.

"I’ve also seen that Curtis Van de Veld who used to represent Doug Moylan in civil matters in the past has also been getting extremely good plea agreements for his clients."

Santos calling for regulation counsel Alicia Limtiaco to have both disbarred for allegedly running a scheme he states, "Flies in the face of the rule of law, rules of professional conduct and the very foundation of civil society.

"That’s abuse of authority to the greatest extent and for that a lawyer should be disbarred point blank and the AG should be disbarred for not only creating this scheme but I think he’s in cahoots."

"This is by far much more egregious when you have a special AG, a defense attorney who is acting as a prosecutor and then causing a case to get dismissed because it’s his former client."

Santos adding he waived his privilege to keep the complaint confidential when speaking with KUAM News about it. 

AG Moylan tells KUAM, "Release of any ethics complaint info violates the Professional Rules.  Anything this losing defense attorney and AG candidate complains about should be scrutinized for bias and improper ulterior motives. Any complaint remains just that until the Ethics Board acts upon it."

"He’s disenchanted with the fact that voters don’t support him and support AG Moylan," said Van De Veld, who contends Santos' complaint is politically motivated and unfounded.

Van De Veld added, "I zealously represent my clients…I represent every client I have with as much fortitude as I possibly can muster. I’ve done that in Guam for 35 years and I am proud of the record I have in protecting the interest of people who are my clients and if I’m going to be criticized for that then so be it. Have at it. I take pride in the fact that I do so. So that’s just ridiculous. But it’s the kind of thing you expect from somebody who is running for political office.

"One of my clients presently is the Office of the Attorney General and just as I have zealously represented all of clients in the past, I will be zealously be representing the people of Guam in prosecuting people for some very serious crimes. I’m not going to pull any punches. I’m going to do the absolute best that I can do to make sure those people who are guilty go to prison."

Van De Veld calling the complaint ridiculous.

"I don’t think he knows anything about what he is talking about. He just wants to cast personal attacks on people because right now it serves – he represents a number of defendants in these homicide cases I am prosecuting and he does not want me on the other side of that case because he knows that he is going to be facing a formidable foe. As I understand, he doesn’t have a very good track record in his files at the OAG. The other is his political ambition," he said.