Derek Achong

Reynold Bed­deau, a deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and health ad­vis­er in the Min­istry of Health, was among four peo­ple grant­ed a to­tal of $3 mil­lion bail yes­ter­day on 200 crim­i­nal charges in­volv­ing the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) and Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) re­turns. Bed­deau was charged along with his wife Camelite, a se­nior hu­man re­source of­fi­cer at the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and Michael Haynes, an em­ploy­ee of the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs. Kel­ly Rad­day, a busi­ness­man, of Kel­ly Vil­lage, Ca­roni, al­so ap­peared with the pub­lic ser­vants on six charges re­lat­ed to BIR and VAT re­turns. A com­pa­ny, Su­pe­ri­or Cater­ing Ser­vices Ltd, was list­ed as a par­ty in the pro­ceed­ings.

The four ac­cused, who looked tired when they ap­peared in court, wait­ed for more than ten hours af­ter they sur­ren­dered to po­lice be­fore they were tak­en be­fore Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Mur­ray in the Sev­enth Court to have the charges read to them. They are charged with a se­ries of of­fences, in­clud­ing fail­ing to com­ply with a re­quest to pro­duce books and records and pro­vid­ing false and mis­lead­ing in­for­ma­tion to the BIR. The charges car­ry a max­i­mum penal­ty of a $15,000 fine or up to two years' im­pris­on­ment. The of­fences were al­leged­ly com­mit­ted be­tween 2008 and 2010 and charges were laid af­ter an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Crim­i­nal Tax In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit of the In­land Rev­enue Unit in the Min­istry of Fi­nance. Al­most a year ago, Haynes, 54, was charged with 103 sim­i­lar of­fences for which he is due to reap­pear in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court in De­cem­ber, as the mat­ter is on­go­ing.

The four sur­ren­dered to the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, at around 5 am yes­ter­day in the com­pa­ny of their at­tor­neys. When they ap­peared be­fore Mur­ray late yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing three of the ac­cused asked that the charges be read at a lat­er date, as their clients had spent al­most the en­tire day pro­vid­ing in­di­vid­ual fin­ger­prints for each charge laid against them. Pros­e­cu­tor act­ing In­spec­tor Joseph Darceuil agreed that the charges should be read at a lat­er date. Darceuil told the court that at­tor­ney Evans Welch would be rep­re­sent­ing the BIR in the mat­ter as a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor.

Darceuil added that there would be two wit­ness­es in the mat­ter, both of whom were em­ployed with the board. Mur­ray agreed with the at­tor­neys' ap­pli­ca­tion and ad­journed the mat­ter. Bail had been pre­vi­ous­ly set at the po­lice sta­tion by a Jus­tice of the Peace. Bed­deau, his wife and Hayes are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Ken Wright and Richard Thomas, while Liana Ram­sa­hai rep­re­sent­ed Rad­day. The mat­ter was ad­journed to this morn­ing when the charges will be read to the group.