The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has agreed to re­lease over $500,000 that was seized from a bar­ber from cen­tral Trinidad when he went to change old cot­ton $100 notes for new poly­mer notes in late 2019.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that last week the TTPS agreed to re­lease the mon­ey, which was the sub­ject of a court or­der, to the son of the bar­ber, who died due to COVID-19 in May 2021 and whose iden­ti­ty was with­held due to se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

Late last month, at­tor­ney Keron Ramkhal­whan, of Ju­ris X Cham­bers, who is rep­re­sent­ing the bar­ber’s son, sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin and the head of the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Branch (FIB) Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Avinash Singh re­quest­ing in­for­ma­tion on the de­lay of the re­lease of the funds.

In the cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Ramkhal­whan said that $883,600 was seized from the bar­ber as he at­tempt­ed to change his cash dur­ing the de­mon­e­ti­za­tion process.

The FIB ob­tained de­ten­tion or­ders in re­la­tion to the cash, which was con­vert­ed and placed in an in­ter­est-bear­ing ac­count.

The bar­ber died at hos­pi­tal while be­ing treat­ed for COVID-19 and his son con­tin­ued to chal­lenge for­fei­ture pro­ceed­ings un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act (POCA) af­ter his death.

At the com­ple­tion of the pro­ceed­ings, a mag­is­trate or­dered that $538,318 be re­turned. The re­main­der of the seized mon­ey was re­tained to cov­er un­paid tax­es owed by the bar­ber to the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR).

Ramkhal­whan ques­tioned the TTPS’s de­lay in re­leas­ing the funds fol­low­ing the court’s rul­ing.

He not­ed that in April the bar­ber’s son was grant­ed let­ters of ad­min­is­tra­tion in re­la­tion to his es­tate.

“The con­tin­ued de­ten­tion of the monies in these cir­cum­stances is un­law­ful, as there ex­ists no statu­to­ry pow­er un­der the POCA to re­tain cash that the Court has ex­plic­it­ly or­dered to be re­turned fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of for­fei­ture pro­ceed­ings,” he said.

“De­spite mul­ti­ple at­tempts to se­cure the re­turn of the funds, all such ef­forts have been un­suc­cess­ful,” he added.

Re­spond­ing to Ramkhal­whan’s let­ter last week, TTPS le­gal of­fi­cer Delise Springer said that the de­lay was due to the un­will­ing­ness of the TTPS to re­lease the funds be­fore the let­ters of ad­min­is­tra­tion were is­sued to legal­ly con­firm that the bar­ber’s son should be the ben­e­fi­cia­ry.

“Hav­ing re­ceived this in­for­ma­tion along with a copy of the said Let­ters of Ad­min­is­tra­tion, the rel­e­vant re­quest was made to the Comp­trol­ler of Ac­count for the re­lease of cash,” he said.

She al­so said that she could not con­firm how much in­ter­est had ac­crued on the funds while be­ing held by the bank.