Rapheal John-Lall

Bank­ing and oth­er types of fraud are in­creas­ing, not on­ly in T&T, but around the world En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said yes­ter­day.

"I have been speak­ing to peo­ple in the bank­ing sec­tor and ap­par­ent­ly fraud is pro­lif­er­at­ing around the world as a con­se­quence of the spread of the In­ter­net and the ease at which mon­ey can move elec­tron­i­cal­ly. This is some­thing we have to deal with here in T&T," he told re­porters yes­ter­day in re­sponse to ques­tions about the theft of $60 mil­lion from the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion (NEC).

Ram­nar­ine, who was at the open­ing of an NP Ram­co Ser­vice Sta­tion at the Massy Su­per Store, Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way, said he had spo­ken with act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams about the mat­ter.

"This mat­ter oc­curred in Sep­tem­ber 2011 and at that time Mr Gibbs was the Com­mis­sion­er. I got con­fir­ma­tion from First Cit­i­zens that they re­port­ed the mat­ter to the po­lice on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2011, so the mat­ter was re­port­ed.

"Na­tion­al En­er­gy has cor­re­spon­dence from the po­lice stat­ing who was the of­fi­cer as­signed to the An­tiguan and Boston com­po­nent," he said.

The min­is­ter said ap­prox­i­mate­ly $25 mil­lion should soon be re­cov­ered.

"From my in­for­ma­tion 42 per cent went to an Abu Dhabi bank that is based in Dubai. The court has or­dered that the mon­ey be frozen and set aside to be re­turned to the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion in T&T. A per­son has been con­vict­ed in Dubai in ab­sen­tia. We have sent teams to Dubai and NEC has re­tained a law firm to rep­re­sent it in Dubai. We are now pur­su­ing the re­cov­ery of that 42 per cent which is in the vicin­i­ty of $25 odd mil­lion through diplo­mat­ic chan­nels," he said.

Last week at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing, Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley ex­posed a num­ber of emails that show $60 mil­lion was stolen from NEC's ac­count at First Cit­i­zens in 2011. He said there were three wire trans­fers in US dol­lars to banks in Abu Dhabi, the Unit­ed States and An­tigua.

"What hap­pened four years ago is some per­son went in­to First Cit­i­zens and rep­re­sent­ed them­selves to be an agent of Na­tion­al En­er­gy. As a con­se­quence il­le­gal wire trans­fers were ef­fect­ed.

"I would like to see that per­son or per­sons brought to jus­tice. I want to see it in the T&T courts. Since that hap­pened Na­tion­al En­er­gy has put in new process­es to en­sure it does not hap­pen again," Ram­nar­ine said.