Derek Achong

A man­ag­er at Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL) Em­ploy­ees' Cred­it Union was de­nied bail when he ap­peared in court yes­ter­day to an­swer a $50 mil­lion fraud charge.

Dar­ren Singh, 35, of Clax­ton Bay, ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Adri­an Dar­manie in the Port-of-Spain Tenth Court.

He is ac­cused of us­ing a fraud­u­lent doc­u­ment to trans­fer a sub­stan­tial sum from the or­gan­i­sa­tion's Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC) ac­count to an­oth­er ac­count at Re­pub­lic Bank's branch,Trop­i­cal Plaza, Point Lisas.

The charge did not in­di­cate whether Singh was able to with­draw the mon­ey af­ter the trans­fer or if the mon­ey had been re­couped by the cred­it union.

The trans­fer al­leged­ly took place on Jan­u­ary 18, 2013. How­ev­er, the Fraud Squad was on­ly able to in­ter­vene late last year when the cred­it union dis­cov­ered the dis­crep­an­cy and re­port­ed it.

Singh was ar­rest­ed late last week, spent the week­end in po­lice cus­tody be­fore be­ing brought to court yes­ter­day.

His lawyer Can­dace Lopez at­tempt­ed to se­cure bail for the fa­ther of five who, she said, was the sole bread­win­ner for his fam­i­ly.

"While I ad­mit that my client may not be a per­fect man, he has agreed to abide by all the con­di­tions that will be placed by the court in grant­i­ng bail," Lopez said as she as­sured Dar­manie that her client would not ab­scond from fu­ture court ap­pear­ances.

Lopez's ap­pli­ca­tion was met with op­po­si­tion from court pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Cal­lis­tas Charles who ob­ject­ed on a num­ber of grounds, in­clud­ing the se­ri­ous­ness of the of­fence, the amount in­volved and the strength of the State's case against Singh.

Charles al­so said the Fraud Squad was in­ves­ti­gat­ing al­le­ga­tions of threats be­ing made to wit­ness­es in the case.

Lopez dis­agreed with Charles's wit­ness tam­per­ing al­le­ga­tion as she said that it was de­void of any ev­i­dence.

Nonethe­less Dar­manie even­tu­al­ly agreed with Charles.

He stat­ed he would on­ly feel com­fort­able in grant­i­ng bail af­ter he views Singh's crim­i­nal record which was not avail­able dur­ing yes­ter­day hear­ing.

Singh is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Mar­tin George. Lopez is ex­pect­ed to reap­ply for bail for Singh when he reap­pears in court to­mor­row.