JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Con­sta­ble LeV­on Sylvester nar­row­ly es­caped hav­ing an ar­rest war­rant is­sued for him yes­ter­day af­ter he failed to ap­pear in court on time in his mat­ter with al­leged fraud­ster Vicky Boodram.

At the last court hear­ing, Sylvester failed to ap­pear, and a sum­mons was is­sued for him. Yes­ter­day, State At­tor­ney Han­nah Kal­jam-Ali asked High Court Mas­ter Re­han­na Ho­sein to is­sue a war­rant af­ter he re­port­ed that he could not log on­to the link ap­prox­i­mate­ly 45 min­utes in­to the mat­ter.

Af­ter the re­quest was made, Sylvester man­aged to log in and apol­o­gised for his ab­sence, say­ing he had dif­fi­cul­ties ac­cess­ing the on­line link.

In 2017, po­lice con­sta­bles Lisa Navar­ro and Sylvester were joint­ly charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice af­ter be­ing ac­cused of ut­ter­ing a forged ju­di­cial note, there­by fa­cil­i­tat­ing the un­law­ful re­lease of Boodram on No­vem­ber 27, 2017, from the Women’s Prison.

The two of­fi­cers and Boodram are col­lec­tive­ly charged with aid­ing Boodram, then a per­son re­mand­ed in the law­ful cus­tody of the State at the Gold­en Grove Prison, in es­cap­ing from the said prison, con­trary to com­mon law.

Boodram’s friend, Rox­anne Cud­joe, was charged with har­bour­ing her at a house at La­choos Road, Pe­nal, with in­tent to im­pede Boodram’s ar­rest.

Boodram, who was grant­ed $40,000 bail in this mat­ter in 2021, re­mains on re­mand for a num­ber of fraud-re­lat­ed mat­ters. On Sep­tem­ber 19, Boodram, 43, was freed of over 100 fraud charges due to de­lays by the pros­e­cu­tion in ad­her­ing to dead­lines for fil­ing ev­i­dence need­ed for a suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing.

Yes­ter­day, Kal­jam-Ali in­formed Ho­sein that while Boodram was freed on the mon­ey laun­der­ing cas­es, there are pend­ing fraud mat­ters. She said based on a crim­i­nal record re­ceived on Oc­to­ber 1, Boodram has 172 charges pend­ing.

Boodram’s at­tor­ney, Stephon Wil­son, ap­plied for her bail to be var­ied, giv­en that she has been in cus­tody for sev­en years, ten months and 11 days. He sub­mit­ted that Boodram faces a max­i­mum sen­tence of five years if con­vict­ed, which is be­yond the time al­ready served, and should have her bail var­ied.

Kal­jam-Ali ob­ject­ed, not­ing that Boodram has oth­er pend­ing mat­ters for which she has no bail, so vary­ing her bail in this case would not change her cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, as she may still re­main in cus­tody.

Ho­sein dis­agreed, say­ing she was not con­cerned with the oth­er mat­ters, as Boodram’s time in cus­tody on the es­cap­ing law­ful cus­tody mat­ter had ex­ceed­ed the max­i­mum sen­tence.

Wil­son, too, dis­agreed with the State’s po­si­tion, re­it­er­at­ing that his client had al­ready served her time await­ing tri­al. He added that there is no prej­u­dice to her be­ing al­lowed her own bail, which Ho­sein agreed with.

She then or­dered that Boodram re­port to the Siparia Po­lice Sta­tion every Wednes­day be­tween 6 am and 6 pm. She was al­so or­dered not to ap­ply for any trav­el doc­u­ments and not to leave the coun­try.

Boodram’s oth­er at­tor­ney, Janeil Chuck, in­formed the court that Boodram will re­side at her aunt’s Gam­ble Street, Siparia home.

Boodram, the own­er of now-de­funct Boodram Trav­el and Ship Ahoy Cruis­es Ltd, was ac­cused of de­fraud­ing nu­mer­ous for­mer clients of more than $1 mil­lion they paid for a cruise in April 2011 that did not ma­te­ri­alise.

Boodram was ini­tial­ly charged with 109 fraud of­fences, but two of the charges were dis­missed be­cause the pros­e­cu­tion could of­fer no ev­i­dence in those mat­ters, as the vic­tims had died.

She was al­so charged with two mon­ey laun­der­ing of­fences.

Those charges al­leged that in Sep­tem­ber 2010, Boodram pur­chased a Mer­cedes-Benz for $621,042.45, and in Oc­to­ber 2010, bought a house and land at Palmiste, San Fer­nan­do, for more than $2 mil­lion, know­ing that the mon­ey was de­rived through fraud­u­lent means.

Be­fore the mat­ter was ad­journed, Boodram thanked the court and asked for ad­vice on how to ac­cess the case vir­tu­al­ly from out­side the women’s prison.

Her mat­ter was ad­journed to De­cem­ber 12 for a suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing. The State was giv­en un­til Oc­to­ber 10 to file its 47 state­ments in the mat­ter, 37 of which have al­ready been dis­closed to the de­fence.

Wil­son said he in­tends to make an ap­pli­ca­tion on the next date and sought Ho­sein’s as­sis­tance in as­sur­ing the state will not be al­lowed to “cor­rect” the er­ror he in­tends to high­light on the ad­journed date, which was grant­ed.

While the mat­ter was ad­journed to De­cem­ber, Sylvester was giv­en an ear­li­er date to en­sure he had an at­tor­ney. He told the court he vis­it­ed the Le­gal Aid of­fice on Mon­day and ap­plied for a pub­lic de­fend­er.

Ho­sein or­dered that he re­turn on No­vem­ber 6 for an up­date on his de­fence at­tor­ney sta­tus. De­spite his tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties in log­ging in, Sylvester said he will ap­pear vir­tu­al­ly on the next oc­ca­sion from his home in­stead of a court por­tal at a po­lice sta­tion.