A former court bailiff was yesterday found guilty of accepting money to do away with a traffic ticket, for which he was fined $75,000 with an alternative of serving nine months imprisonment.
Magistrate Sueanna Lovell handed down the sentence to Jagdeo Samaroo at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court, where he was on trial on a charge of corrupt transactions of a government agent.
It was alleged that on September 22, 2009, in Georgetown, being an agent employed by the Government of Guyana, Samaroo corruptly accepted the sum of $17,500, the value of a traffic ticket, from Christopher Dhoronraj as an inducement to forebear prosecution in relation to offences arising from the ticket.
The value of the traffic ticket was subsequently amended to read $9,000.
Samaroo, 31, had pleaded not guilty to the charge, but was found guilty by the court.
His lawyer, pleading for a non-custodial sentence, told the court that he had been employed for nine years with the bailiff section of the court.
She stated that his crime did not harm anyone, and that he was no threat to society, while adding that he would reform himself.
