Two peo­ple have now been charged in con­nec­tion with a pay­roll fraud and mon­ey laun­der­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion at the Port of Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice said a 43-year-old self-em­ployed man from Up­per San­ta Cruz was charged on Sun­day night with mon­ey laun­der­ing un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act. He is the com­mon-law hus­band of a salary clerk at the Cor­po­ra­tion who was charged last week.

The clerk was ar­rest­ed on Sep­tem­ber 4 at the Cor­po­ra­tion’s of­fice on Knox and Fred­er­ick Streets by of­fi­cers of the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch. She has since been charged with ob­tain­ing mon­ey by false pre­tence to­talling $29,174.50, and with mon­ey laun­der­ing for re­ceiv­ing $14,210.50 be­lieved to be crim­i­nal prop­er­ty.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­gan in Sep­tem­ber 2024 af­ter an ac­coun­tant at the Cor­po­ra­tion un­cov­ered dis­crep­an­cies in the pay­roll sys­tem. Checks re­vealed that Na­tion­al In­sur­ance de­duc­tions were record­ed for in­di­vid­u­als who were not em­ployed at the time. In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the clerk ma­nip­u­lat­ed the sys­tem to ap­prove unau­tho­rised salary pay­ments, which were de­posit­ed in­to her per­son­al bank ac­count and in­to one be­long­ing to her part­ner.

Be­tween June and Sep­tem­ber 2024, the sec­ond sus­pect al­leged­ly re­ceived $14,964 in fraud­u­lent pay­ments, de­spite not be­ing em­ployed at the Cor­po­ra­tion.