Four employees of the Couva/Tabaquite/Talparo Regional Corporation (CTTRC) will appear before a Port of Spain magistrate today, charged with conspiring to defraud the CTTRC of $149,500.
The four, along with a company, were charged on Saturday after officers of the Fraud Squad consulted with the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions on the issue.
Insp Dipchan, of the Fraud Squad, charged the four—CTTRC CEO Carol Dyal; Barry Samaroo, a Chief Engineer; Maniram Mohess, a county superintendent and Ian Gokool, a Road Officer 1—along with Suk-I Contractors Limited. The offence is alleged to have occurred on September 30 last year.
On Friday, police went to the CTTRC’s office, along Railway Road, Couva, and held the employees, who were being investigated for corruption. The four and the company were after an investigation into the installation of outdoor exercise equipment at the San Pablo Recreation Ground and the Todd’s Road Activity Centre.
The contract was awarded during the 2014/15 fiscal year, but cheques and other documents related to this were seized by Fraud Squad officers at the CTTRC last November. On November 25, Fraud Squad officers questioned senior employees in the accounting department, when they searched the compound and seized financial records, including cheques and files of contractors contracted by the corporation, as well as other documentary evidence associated with alleged corrupt payments to certain contractors.
Meanwhile, a contractor held in a separate sting in connection with paying a bribe to CTTRC councillor Alif Mohammed is yet to be charged, after he had to be taken to the hospital after complaining of feeling unwell over the weekend.
The 78-year-old contractor is accused of offering Mohammed a bribe to overlook shoddy work he had done on a box drain contract.