Ban­dits es­caped with close to $200,000 af­ter rob­bing a busi­ness­man in Cou­va on Thurs­day af­ter­noon.

Po­lice said the vic­tim, who owns a fish busi­ness, was at his premis­es around 1.30 pm when four gun­men—dressed in dark cloth­ing and wear­ing masks—emerged from near­by bush­es and ac­cost­ed him.

The as­sailants stole $20,000 from the cash reg­is­ter.

One of the sus­pects then forced the vic­tim up­stairs to his home on the up­per floor of the build­ing and in­to a bed­room, where they stole $172,000 from a safe.

The ban­dits then ran off.

Of­fi­cers from the Cou­va CID re­spond­ed, and in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.

Fi­nance em­ploy­ee charged

with forgery

A 57-year-old em­ploy­ee of the Min­istry of Fi­nance is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore a Mas­ter of the High Court in May, to face the charges of forgery and ut­ter­ing a forged doc­u­ment.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the ac­cused in the mat­ter, Kathy-Ann Thomp­son, is sched­uled to ap­pear in court on Fri­day May 16, for the con­tin­u­a­tion of le­gal pro­ceed­ings.

A state­ment from the Po­lice Ser­vice yes­ter­day stat­ed that the charges were pre­sent­ed be­fore Mas­ter In­di­ra Chinebass in a vir­tu­al hear­ing on Tues­day (April 22, 2025), by PC Ed­wards of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACIB).

Ac­cord­ing to the TTPS, the Min­istry of Fi­nance was con­tact­ed in June 2024 by a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, seek­ing to ver­i­fy the au­then­tic­i­ty of a job let­ter, al­leged­ly sub­mit­ted via email by an em­ploy­ee of the Min­istry’s In­vest­ments Di­vi­sion.

Up­on ex­am­i­na­tion, it was al­leged the doc­u­ment had not been is­sued by the Min­istry of Fi­nance. An of­fi­cial re­port was made in Ju­ly 2024, to the ACIB’s White Col­lar Crime Di­vi­sion.

Thomp­son was ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the mat­ter and was charged with the of­fences fol­low­ing ad­vice re­ceived from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was spear­head­ed by Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Suzette Mar­tin and As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, White Col­lar Crime, De­nis Knutt.  It was co­or­di­nat­ed by Snr Supt. Singh and In­sp Seep­er­sad, and in­clud­ed WPC An­toine, and PCs Ed­wards and Al­leyne, of the ACIB.

Team mem­bers from the Cy­ber and So­cial Me­dia Unit and the Spe­cial Branch al­so as­sist­ed.