A Trinidad court dismissed a fraud case against former Island Club Group manager Abbas Khale(di) after long delays and missing witnesses.
Derek Achong Se-nior Re-porter A for-mer man-ag-er of the Is-land Club Group of Com-pa-nies has been freed of fraud due to de-lays in pros-e-cut-ing him.. The case against Ab-bas Khale-di was dis-missed by Mag-is-trate Re-han-na Ali in the Tu-na-puna Dis-trict Court on Wednes-day.. The out-come of the case came months af-ter the com-pa-ny’s for-mer di-rec-tor and se-cu-ri-ty man-ag-er, In-grid Dop-son, was freed of 11 fraud charges in sim-i-lar cir-cum-stances.. Khale-di was ac-cused of fraud-u-lent-ly con-vert-ing
a Nis-san pan-el van for his own ben-e-fit in 2015.. Through-out the pro-ceed-ings, Khale-di’s lawyers, led by Ra-jiv Rick-hi, raised con-cerns over a lack of ev-i-dence against him and filed ap-pli-ca-tions chal-leng-ing the ad-mis-si-bil-i-ty, re-li-a-bil-i-ty and fair-ness of the pros-e-cu-tor’s pro-posed ev-i-dence.. They claimed that due to de-lays in the case, sev-er-al key wit-ness-es died and would not be able to be cross-ex-am-ined over their claims against Khale-di.. When the case came up for hear-ing,
Khale-di’s lawyers were ready to pro-ceed, but the pros-e-cu-tor Orin Kerr, the sub-sti-tute po-lice com-plainant and the State’s wit-ness-es were not present.. Mag-is-trate Ali agreed to dis-miss the case due to the pro-longed his-to-ry of de-lays and non-com-pli-ance.. Khale-di was al-so rep-re-sent-ed by Shve-ta Paras-ram, Ria Ra-moutar and Mikkell Sama-roo.. In Ju-ly 2017, Dop-son was slapped with five charges for ob-tain-ing mon-ey un-der false pre-tences, five charges for ut-ter-ing a forged doc-u-ment and one charge
for fraud-u-lent con-ver-sa-tion.. The charges came af-ter the casi-no’s Amer-i-can own-er David Migliore re-port-ed that she had al-leged-ly forged a doc-u-ment which pur-port-ed to ap-point her, her sis-ter and Khale-di to the board of an-oth-er com-pa-ny he owned.. He al-leged that Dop-son had used the forged doc-u-ment to pro-cure mon-ey to be paid to her sis-ter and Khale-di.. The case against Dop-son was at the pre-lim-i-nary en-quiry stage for sev-er-al years be-fore it was trans-ferred
to Mas-ter Mar-garet Sookraj-Goswa-mi based on the pro-vi-sions of the Ad-min-is-tra-tion of Jus-tice (In-dictable Pro-ceed-ings) Amend-ment Act (AJI-PAA).. The leg-is-la-tion sought to im-prove ef-fi-cien-cy in the crim-i-nal jus-tice sys-tem by re-plac-ing pro-tract-ed pre-lim-i-nary en-quiries be-fore mag-is-trates with quick-er suf-fi-cien-cy hear-ings be-fore High Court Mas-ters.. Dur-ing a hear-ing on Jan-u-ary 8, last year, Mas-ter Sookraj-Goswa-mi set dead-lines for pros-e-cu-tors to file the in-dict-ment against Dop-son.. Rick-hi, who al-so rep-re-sent-ed Dop-son, suc-cess-ful-ly made an ap-pli-ca-tion to dis-miss
the charges af-ter the dead-line was not com-plied with and pros-e-cu-tors failed to give a suf-fi-cient ex-pla-na-tion for such.. In 2013, Migliore, a res-i-dent of New Jer-sey, was charged in the Unit-ed States for tax eva-sion.. He was ac-cused of fail-ing to pay the US Gov-ern-ment tax-es on more than US$3.9 mil-lion in in-come he earned be-tween 2009 and 2011 from his busi-ness in-ter-ests in T&T, in-clud-ing the casi-no, which was lo-cat-ed in Grand Bazaar..
In 2015, Migliore plead-ed guilty to the charges and was sen-tenced to 46 months in prison.. He was al-so or-dered to pay al-most US$1.3 mil-lion in resti-tu-tion to the US gov-ern-ment.
Abbas Khaledi, fraud case dismissed, Island Club Group, Orin Kerr, Rehanna Ali, Ingrid Dops(on), AJI-PAA