An­na-Lisa Paul

Two weeks af­ter First Cit­i­zens Bank (FCB) asked for the re­turn of $2.2 mil­lion al­leged­ly stolen from it through fraud­u­lent trans­ac­tions, a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate said she was not con­fi­dent the po­lice could "safe­ly and pru­dent­ly" look af­ter it.Af­ter re­ject­ing sug­ges­tions the mon­ey should be kept at the Cen­tral Bank or giv­en to FCB for safe­keep­ing, Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Mur­ray yes­ter­day or­dered that the $2,255,890 should be de­posit­ed at the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC).

It would be held in es­crow there in an in­ter­est-bear­ing ac­count un­til the court makes a fur­ther or­der.Mur­ray said the mon­ey should be im­me­di­ate­ly de­posit­ed by and in the name of the Clerk of the Peace, St George West dis­trict.FCB's at­tor­ney Sophia Chote, SC, asked Mur­ray to vary the or­der but she re­fused.At­tor­neys for both sides are con­cerned about the mon­ey be­ing put back in­to cir­cu­la­tion be­fore the mat­ter has been de­cid­ed.Mur­ray's rul­ing fol­lowed Chote's ap­pli­ca­tion for it to be kept in an FCB vault or lodged at the Cen­tral Bank, a re­quest to which Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­baran agreed.

The rul­ing fol­lowed two weeks of ar­gu­ments by Chote and Win­ter about who should keep the mon­ey.Read­ing from the eight-page rul­ing, Mur­ray said: "It may be the com­mer­cial busi­ness of the vir­tu­al com­plainant to hold bank notes for safe­keep­ing on be­half of its clients."How­ev­er, the ban­knotes are now the sub­ject of on­go­ing crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings and the ap­pli­cant is an in­ter­est­ed par­ty as the vir­tu­al com­plainant. It may be ar­gued that the vir­tu­al com­plainant would have no re­al in­ter­est in pur­su­ing the pros­e­cu­tion of the crim­i­nal charges as they would have been re­stored to their po­si­tion be­fore the com­mis­sion of the al­leged of­fence."In the cir­cum­stances, the court would not make an or­der for the ban­knotes to be de­tained at the vir­tu­al com­plainant's bank," Mur­ray read.

Chote re­peat­ed an ear­li­er of­fer by FCB to pho­to­copy each ban­knote be­fore it was de­cid­ed where the mon­ey would be kept.

Facts

The mon­ey was seized by the Fraud Squad on April 7 when it searched a house in Trinci­ty and ar­rest­ed four peo­ple.Hair­dress­er Sum­mer Bris­tol, 32, of Mil­len­ni­um Park, Trinci­ty, and Shawn Davis, 39, a sound en­gi­neer of Er­ic Roach Cir­cu­lar Road, La Hor­quet­ta, are joint­ly charged with fete pro­mot­er Lin­coln Amery Gopeechan, 30, of Fourth Street, Mon­tague Av­enue, Trinci­ty, and elec­tri­cian Leon Gomes, 38, of Spring Vil­lage, Val­sayn.

The four are fac­ing 23 charges of ob­tain­ing close to $3 mil­lion from var­i­ous branch­es of First Cit­i­zens on April 6 and 7.They were each grant­ed $750,000 bail on April 15 but on­ly Bris­tol and Davis post­ed bail. They have since fled the coun­try and ru­mours con­tin­ue to swirl that they are now in Venezuela.The four are due to reap­pear in court on June 14.