Magistrate Nyasha Williams-Hatmin was on Wednesday forced to adjourn the multi-million dollar fraud case involving three former top New Building Society (NBS) managers and four employees to March 25 owing to the non-completion of a related matter in the High Court.
Maurice Arjoon of 1-2 La Fleur Road, Eccles (Director-Secretary); Kissoon Baldeo, 38, of 86 Zeeburg, West Coast Demerara (Assistant Mort-gage Manager) and Kent Vincent of 1247 Canje Pheasant Lane, South Ruim-veldt (Operations Manager) who are accused of conspiracy to defraud the NBS of $69M along with Ashley Legall, 59, Imran Bacchus, Amarita Prashad, 18, and Mohanram Shahebudin who were subsequently embroiled in the conspiracy to defraud case, were present in court on Wednesday.
Attorney-at-law Hukumchand, who is the special prosecutor in the case, told the court when the matter was called that the prosecution could not proceed until the determination of the High Court matter which was brought by Arjoon, Vincent and Baldeo.
Defence counsel Anil Nandlall who is representing Baldeo and Arjune however submitted that the case in the High Court is only attempting to stop the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) from instituting fresh charges.
Lawyers for the managers had filed a motion in the High Court before Justice Jainarayan Singh Jr asking that the court prohibit the DPP, the Commissioner of Police or any of his servants from reinstituting any new charges against the trio.
The managers were first charged with defrauding the society of the money but as investigations intensified the other four were arrested and subsequently charged.
In October last year, the four former employees were slapped with the very charges which were then dropped and later instituted against the former managers.
Since then the matter has been stalled by High Court proceedings filed by the lawyers.
The first charge alleges that on November 20, 2006 Legall, Bacchus and Shahebudin conspired with others to withdraw $20.5M from the Savings and Prosper account in the name of Bibi Khan at NBS by way of two cheques.
On November 1, 2006 the second charge read that Legall, Bacchus, Prashad and Shahebudin allegedly conspired with others to withdraw $15M from Khan’s account in the form of two cheques in the name of M. Kryshundayal and Compton Chase respectively.
The third charge stated that Bacchus, Legall, Shahebudin, Baldeo and Vincent on November 17 allegedly conspired to withdraw $22,664,000 from Khan’s account by using two cheques, one in the name of M. Hussein and the other, Compton Chase.
And the fourth charge said that on November 8, Arjune, Vincent, Bacchus, Legall and Shahebudin conspired with others to withdraw $32,230,384 from Khan’s account using two cheques.
