Derek Achong

A busi­ness­man from cen­tral Trinidad and four em­ploy­ees of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) ap­peared in court yes­ter­day, ac­cused of con­spir­ing to de­fraud the lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tion of $149,500.

CT­TRC CEO Car­ol Dyal; Bar­ry Sama­roo, a chief en­gi­neer; Mani­ram Mo­hess, a coun­ty su­per­in­ten­dent; Ian Gokool, a road of­fi­cer; and Ma­hase Sookai, a busi­ness­man, were not called up­on to plead to the fraud charge when they ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court.

Ac­com­pa­nied in court by their rel­a­tives, the group stood silent­ly in the pris­on­er en­clo­sure of the court as the charge was be­ing read.

Asked for their opin­ion on bail, po­lice pros­e­cu­tors asked Charles to at­tach con­di­tions to the bail re­quir­ing the ac­cused to re­port week­ly to po­lice for the du­ra­tion of their case. Charles re­fused the re­quest and not­ed that none of the five had crim­i­nal records. She then opt­ed to reg­u­larise the $300,000 bail each was grant­ed by a jus­tice of the peace while they were in po­lice cus­tody.

"The sum of bail fixed seems to be rea­son­able and if they de­cide not to com­ply the con­se­quences will be ob­vi­ous," Charles said.

The group is ac­cused of con­spir­ing to de­fraud the cor­po­ra­tion through the in­stal­la­tion of out­door ex­er­cise equip­ment at the San Pablo Recre­ation Ground and the Todd's Road Ac­tiv­i­ty Cen­tre. Sookai's com­pa­ny was al­leged­ly award­ed the con­tracts and was paid al­though no work had been done. The of­fence is al­leged to have oc­curred on Sep­tem­ber 20, last year.

The con­tract was award­ed dur­ing the 2014/15 fis­cal year, but cheques and oth­er doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to this were seized by Fraud Squad of­fi­cers at the CT­TRC last No­vem­ber. On No­vem­ber 25, Fraud Squad of­fi­cers ques­tioned se­nior em­ploy­ees in the ac­count­ing de­part­ment as they searched the com­pound and seized fi­nan­cial records, in­clud­ing cheques and files of con­trac­tors con­tract­ed by the cor­po­ra­tion, as well as oth­er doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence as­so­ci­at­ed with al­leged cor­rupt pay­ments to cer­tain con­trac­tors.

Last Fri­day, po­lice went to the CT­TRC of­fice, along Rail­way Road, Cou­va, and held the em­ploy­ees who were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for cor­rup­tion.

The charge was laid by In­sp Ramd­hanie Dipc­hand of the Fraud Squad. The group will reap­pear in the Cou­va Mag­is­trates Court on Thurs­day.