Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A for­mer em­ploy­ee of ANSA Bank is set to have to pay mil­lions of dol­lars in com­pen­sa­tion for his role in a $30 mil­lion fraud­u­lent loan con­spir­a­cy in­volv­ing a group of for­eign used car deal­ers. 

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment yes­ter­day morn­ing, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad up­held the bank’s mul­ti-faceted case against its for­mer busi­ness de­vel­op­ment of­fi­cer, Dwayne Ro­jas. 

How­ev­er, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad re­ject­ed its case against Ro­jas’ for­mer col­leagues, dig­i­tal sup­port ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive Zaria Sankar, busi­ness de­vel­op­ment man­ag­er Rey­vaan Ram­per­sad, and op­er­a­tions su­per­vi­sor Ker­ry Ram­sa­roop. 

He al­so dis­missed an as­pect of the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar case against Adri­ana Ram­s­ingh, who was not em­ployed by the bank but was in a re­la­tion­ship with a for­mer se­nior em­ploy­ee, whom the bank pre­vi­ous­ly ob­tained a de­fault judg­ment against, and ben­e­fit­ed from a $2.75 mil­lion loan to pur­chase a prop­er­ty in Cas­cade.

The ex­act com­pen­sa­tion to be paid by Ro­jas is ex­pect­ed to be as­sessed by Jus­tice Seep­er­sad af­ter fur­ther le­gal sub­mis­sions. 

In Oc­to­ber 2023, the bank filed the law­suit against for­mer em­ploy­ees Randy Gottsleben, Ro­jas, Sankar, Ram­bar­ran, Ram­per­sad, Ram­sa­roop, Gottsleben’s part­ner Ram­s­ingh, Arnold Ram­jass Au­to Me­chan­i­cal & Paint­ing Garage, Cey­lon Mar­ket­ing Ltd, Joalex Au­to Ltd, Mi­va Im­port Ex­port Con­sul­tan­cy Ltd, Di­a­mond Con­cep­tions Com­pa­ny Ltd, and It’s A Deal Ltd. 

The bank launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion af­ter its di­rec­tor, Lar­ry Howai, re­ceived a let­ter from a whistle­blow­er al­leg­ing mis­con­duct. 

The ini­tial in­ves­ti­ga­tion found that there were loan trans­ac­tions not in ac­cor­dance with com­pa­ny pol­i­cy.

A wider in­ves­ti­ga­tion was done at the Ch­agua­nas branch of the bank where the dis­crep­an­cies were found, and a con­spir­a­cy was al­leged­ly un­cov­ered where the bank sus­tained loss­es of al­most $30 mil­lion in two and a half years in­volv­ing 35 ve­hi­cles and prop­er­ties.

In the law­suit, the bank al­leged that its for­mer em­ploy­ees and the com­pa­nies en­gaged in a con­spir­a­cy to present fraud­u­lent doc­u­ments and make fraud­u­lent rep­re­sen­ta­tions to help se­cure loans. 

The bank ob­tained de­fault judg­ments, to­talling $20 mil­lion, against Gottsleben and the com­pa­nies af­ter they failed to prop­er­ly de­fend the case. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad found Ro­jas cul­pa­ble, as he not­ed that he should have recog­nised is­sues with the sup­port­ing doc­u­ments for the loans if he was hon­est­ly dis­charg­ing his du­ties. 

“Sev­er­al of the im­pugned trans­ac­tions dis­played ir­reg­u­lar co­in­ci­dences, as many of the ap­pli­cants were rel­a­tive­ly young, had no proof of sig­nif­i­cant ed­u­ca­tion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions, and worked for the same com­pa­nies, and they all earned un­usu­al­ly high salaries,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said. 

“This de­fen­dant ei­ther au­thored or fa­cil­i­tat­ed or con­doned the acts of ma­nip­u­la­tion and de­ceit, which were craft­ed by or for the roll-on roll-off deal­ers to mis­lead the claimant, and, on a bal­ance of prob­a­bil­i­ties, this court finds that it is more like­ly than not that the fact Ro­jas failed to iden­ti­fy and flag the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of er­rors in the job let­ters and the cer­ti­fied ex­tracts sug­gests that he was know­ing­ly part of a fraud­u­lent de­sign which was ex­e­cut­ed to ob­tain funds from the claimant,” he added. 

He al­so not­ed that Ro­jas ad­mit­ted that he was friends with of­fi­cials of the deal­ers and that they would lime at bars in cen­tral Trinidad. 

Deal­ing with Ro­jas’ co-work­ers, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed by the bank to prove their in­volve­ment in the con­spir­a­cy, as their par­tic­i­pa­tion came af­ter the loans were es­sen­tial­ly ap­proved and was rel­a­tive­ly mi­nor. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so crit­i­cised the bank for fail­ing to bring key se­nior of­fi­cials to tes­ti­fy in the case over how the fraud­u­lent trans­ac­tions were not de­tect­ed.

De­scrib­ing their ab­sence from the case as “strik­ing” and “deeply cu­ri­ous”, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said, “These se­nior of­fi­cials were cen­tral fig­ures in the chain of de­ci­sion-mak­ing process and their ev­i­dence would have been help­ful, as they were poised to clar­i­fy how these loans were vet­ted, ap­proved, and dis­bursed.” 

Deal­ing with the claim against Ram­s­ingh, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that there was no ev­i­dence to prove she was part of the con­spir­a­cy be­sides her re­la­tion­ship with Gottsleben. He al­so not­ed that the prop­er­ty was seized and sold by the bank in or­der to re­coup the bal­ance on the loan. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ad­vised the bank that it should im­prove its in­ter­nal sys­tems to pre­vent a re­cur­rence of the fraud. 

He di­rect­ed that his judg­ment be sent to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for a crim­i­nal probe to be launched. 

Bank re­sponds

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the bank re­spond­ed to the rul­ing say­ing: "ANSA Bank ac­knowl­edges to­day’s rul­ing of the High Court. We be­lieve this judge­ment rep­re­sents a vic­to­ry not on­ly for ANSA Bank, but for Trinidad and To­ba­go, as the court has con­firmed that fraud­u­lent acts and re­lat­ed con­spir­a­cy will be brought to jus­tice. We thank the Ho­n­ourable Court for its thor­ough con­sid­er­a­tion of this mat­ter.

The pur­suit of this judge­ment re­flects our com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing the high­est stan­dards of in­tegri­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty across all ar­eas of our op­er­a­tions.

At ANSA Bank, we have de­vel­oped sys­tems guid­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice aimed at strength­en­ing our in­ter­nal con­trols and over­sight mech­a­nisms, that are ro­bust and re­silient.

We re­main ful­ly ded­i­cat­ed to pro­tect­ing our cus­tomers, our em­ploy­ees and the fi­nan­cial sys­tem of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

We will con­tin­ue to co­op­er­ate with all rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties as re­quired."