An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­nal­isa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Al­though a post mortem was or­dered to be per­formed on de­ceased busi­ness­man Wayne Yip Choy yes­ter­day, in­ves­ti­ga­tors con­firmed a sui­cide note was found on his per­son min­utes af­ter he re­port­ed­ly shot him­self.

Pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion in­di­cat­ed the death has so far been ruled a sui­cide.

The 73-year-old for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of An­gos­tu­ra Ltd, was found ly­ing face-down in the carpark of his gat­ed apart­ment com­plex at Har­bour View, Ocean Boule­vard, West­moor­ings on Mon­day.

The apart­ment com­plex man­ag­er was speak­ing with two se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers sta­tioned at the front gate of the build­ing around 1.50 pm on Mon­day, when two loud ex­plo­sions were heard.

Up­on check­ing, the three found Yip Choy ly­ing on the ground un­der a tree, with a firearm in his hand, bleed­ing from a wound to the back.

He had been clad in long black pants and a blue shirt, with a black jack­et over his hand.

The man­ag­er con­tact­ed the po­lice and alert­ed the Emer­gency Health Ser­vices (EHS).

How­ev­er, Yip Choy was de­clared dead at the scene by the Dis­trict Med­ical Of­fi­cer.

Fol­low­ing a search of Yip Choy’s apart­ment, of­fi­cers seized one roll of duct tape, one red han­dled knife, one roll of plas­tic wrap, two note­books, one jour­nal, one Ipad, two Iphones, one FUL Book­let with the name Wayne Yip Choy, one mag­a­zine and 19 rounds of 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion.

The vic­tim’s li­censed firearm along with one mag­a­zine and eight rounds of 9 mm am­mu­ni­tion, were tak­en off his per­son fol­low­ing the shoot­ing.

An ini­tial ex­am­i­na­tion of his body showed two gun­shot wounds to the chest area — and a search of his front pock­ets turned up a Zi­plock bag which con­tained his dri­ver’s per­mit and a let­ter.

CCTV footage cap­tured at the apart­ment com­plex showed Yip Choy walk­ing along the car park to the tree where he stood, be­fore dis­charg­ing the firearm and falling to the ground.

Yip Choy be­gan his ca­reer in 1976 as man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Sweet­heart Cakes Ltd, which was lat­er re­named Kiss Bak­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd.

He al­so served as man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny and was a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion.

His tenure as CEO of An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd re­mained one of the most defin­ing chap­ters of his ca­reer, large­ly due to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his de­par­ture.

Yip Choy was ap­point­ed to lead An­gos­tu­ra in the af­ter­math of the 2009 col­lapse of CL Fi­nan­cial Ltd, at a time when the com­pa­ny was bur­dened by sig­nif­i­cant debt and was cred­it­ed with play­ing a key role in its turn­around.

His tenure end­ed in 2011 fol­low­ing a dis­pute over per­for­mance-based com­pen­sa­tion, in­clud­ing a bonus tied to the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial re­sults.

Yip Choy main­tained that the pay­ment—es­ti­mat­ed at about $20 mil­lion—was jus­ti­fied based on the com­pa­ny’s per­for­mance.

The dis­pute led to le­gal ac­tion, cul­mi­nat­ing in a High Court rul­ing in his favour.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered by Jus­tice James Aboud, Yip Choy was award­ed $28 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion af­ter a pro­tract­ed le­gal bat­tle with An­gos­tu­ra.

Yip Choy al­so served pre­vi­ous­ly on the boards of Readymix, Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd and Trinidad Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd (Print).