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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Over 20 witness statements filed against pastor in $30m laundering case

by

Derek Achong
1317 days ago
20211130
Pastor Vinworth Dayal

Pastor Vinworth Dayal

Pros­e­cu­tors in the mon­ey laun­der­ing case of a pas­tor from south Trinidad, who al­leged­ly at­tempt­ed to change al­most $30 mil­lion in old cot­ton $100 notes in­to new poly­mer re­place­ments on the dead­line for do­ing so, al­most two years ago, have filed most of their wit­ness state­ments.

Dur­ing a brief vir­tu­al hear­ing be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle, yes­ter­day morn­ing, pros­e­cu­tor Nigel Pil­grim not­ed that his of­fice had al­ready filed and served 18 wit­ness state­ments with six re­main­ing state­ments ex­pect­ed to be filed and served by next week.

Pil­grim said that the par­ties are ex­pect­ed to file ev­i­den­tial ob­jec­tions in the case in Jan­u­ary. The case was ad­journed to March.

Vin­worth Day­al, of Gulf View, La Ro­maine, who is the head of the Third Ex­o­dus As­sem­bly Church in Long­denville, is ac­cused of be­ing in pos­ses­sion of a to­tal of $30,719,938 in cash know­ing that part or all was the pro­ceed­ings of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty con­trary to the In­come Tax Act.

He is fac­ing two mon­ey laun­der­ing charges un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act.

When Day­al first ap­peared in court in Ju­ly, he was re­leased on $10 mil­lion in bail.

Day­al came un­der the po­lice’s radar af­ter he al­leged­ly at­tempt­ed to change $28,028,600 in old $100 notes at the Cen­tral Bank in Port-of-Spain on De­cem­ber 31, 2019.

Of­fi­cers of the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit (FIU) then ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at the church and al­leged­ly found $2,691,338 in small­er de­nom­i­na­tions.

The mon­ey was de­tained un­der the leg­is­la­tion with the lat­est re­new­al of the de­ten­tion or­der be­ing grant­ed in Ju­ly. Un­der the leg­is­la­tion, the cash can be de­tained for up to two years.

In the event that Day­al is even­tu­al­ly ex­on­er­at­ed, he can ap­ply for the mon­ey, which has been de­posit­ed in an in­ter­est bear­ing ac­count, to be re­turned with in­ter­est. For­fei­ture pro­ceed­ings can al­so be ini­ti­at­ed if he is con­vict­ed.

Day­al is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Pamela El­der, SC, Richard Ma­son and Ann Marie Phillip.


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