A for­mer di­rec­tor and se­cu­ri­ty man­ag­er of Is­land Club Casi­no has been freed of 11 fraud charges, al­most eight years af­ter she was first charged.

In­grid Dop­son, of Cunu­pia, was freed of the charges on Wednes­day af­ter High Court Mas­ter Mar­garet Sookraj-Goswa­mi up­held an ap­pli­ca­tion over de­lays in pros­e­cut­ing the case.

In Ju­ly 2017, Dop­son was slapped with five charges for ob­tain­ing mon­ey un­der false pre­tences, five charges for ut­ter­ing a forged doc­u­ment, and one charge for fraud­u­lent con­ver­sion.

The charges came af­ter the casi­no’s Amer­i­can own­er, David Migliore, re­port­ed that Dop­son had al­leged­ly forged a doc­u­ment which pur­port­ed to ap­point her, her sis­ter, and a col­league, Ab­bas Khale­di, to the board of an­oth­er com­pa­ny he owned.

He al­leged that Dop­son had used the forged doc­u­ment to pro­cure mon­ey to be paid to her sis­ter and Khale­di.

Khale­di, the casi­no’s for­mer man­ag­er, was slapped with one charge. His case is still pend­ing.

The case against Dop­son was at the pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry stage for sev­er­al years be­fore it was trans­ferred to Mas­ter Sookraj-Goswa­mi based on the pro­vi­sions of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Amend­ment Act (AJI­PAA).

The leg­is­la­tion sought to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem by re­plac­ing pro­tract­ed pre­lim­i­nary en­quiries be­fore mag­is­trates with quick­er suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ings be­fore High Court Mas­ters.

Dur­ing a hear­ing on Jan­u­ary 8, Mas­ter Sookraj-Goswa­mi set dead­lines for pros­e­cu­tors to file the in­dict­ment against Dop­son.

Dop­son’s lawyers, led by Ra­jiv Rick­hi, made the ap­pli­ca­tion af­ter the dead­line was not com­plied with and pros­e­cu­tors failed to give a suf­fi­cient ex­pla­na­tion for such.

She was dis­charged un­der sec­tion 24 of AJI­PAA, which al­so gives the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) the right to ap­peal the Mas­ter’s de­ci­sion.

In 2013, Migliore, a res­i­dent of New Jer­sey, was charged in the Unit­ed States for tax eva­sion.

He was ac­cused of fail­ing to pay the US Gov­ern­ment tax­es on more than US$3.9 mil­lion in in­come he earned be­tween 2009 and 2011 from his busi­ness in­ter­ests in T&T, in­clud­ing the casi­no, lo­cat­ed in Grand Bazaar.

In 2015, Migliore plead­ed guilty to the charges and was sen­tenced to 46 months in prison. He was al­so or­dered to pay al­most US$1.3 mil­lion in resti­tu­tion to the US gov­ern­ment.

Dop­son was be­ing pros­e­cut­ed by at­tor­ney Orin Kerr. Dop­son was rep­re­sent­ed by Suneesh Singh and Shve­ta Paras­ram. She was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Jagdeo Singh be­fore he was ap­point­ed Speak­er of the House ear­li­er this year.