The US$2M Sacred Heart Church fraud case against Frederick Sukhdeo was yesterday dismissed by Magistrate Hazel Octive-Hamilton who said that there was insufficient evidence against him, ending years of litigation.
Sukhdeo was accused of being the mastermind of an insurance scam committed on the Church which was completely gutted by fire on Christmas Day in 2004. The case has been before the court since 2006.
When the case was called yesterday afternoon, the magistrate upheld a no- case submission made by defence attorney Sanjeev Datadin which was made shortly after the prosecution closed its case last week without the testimony of key witness, Gregory Yeadon, a Barbados-based loss adjuster.
The magistrate in handing down her decision said that there was no link between the offence alleged and the defendant. She further stressed that there was no evidence to suggest that Sukhdeo was implicated in the offence alleged.
In November 2009, the then prosecutor Shellon Daniels requested that the matter be put down sine die (indefinitely) as she was making efforts to get Yeadon to bring an original document. The request was later granted by the magistrate. The case was reopened last December.
However during a hearing in March, the court was forced to adjourn the matter after lawyers for Sukhdeo filed a Constitutional Motion in the High Court seeking to prohibit criminal prosecution in the lower court.
The lawyers Sir Fenton Ramsahoye and Datadin in their court document contended that the current proceedings were unlawful as they were restarted without legal authority or Sukhdeo’s knowledge and that he was seeking a refund of forfeited bail as well as damages.
According to the Notice of Motion, Sukhdeo is seeking from Attorney General (AG) Anil Nandlall, who is listed as the respondent, compensation and/or damages including a vindicatory award in response to the proceedings being conducted in the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court; repayment of $75,000 “being bail money unlawfully forfeited by the magistrate in the said proceedings”; and an order prohibiting the magistrate from further prosecution and hearing of the criminal proceedings, “which the magistrate purported to resume without lawful authority following the unlawful continuance of the proceedings sine die at a magisterial hearing.”
He is also seeking declarations that the discontinuance of the hearing by a purported adjournment and/or postponement sine die and the purported resumption thereof without notice to him or at all was beyond the statutory powers vested in the magistrate on the summary trial of two offences charged; that the continuance of the proceedings was unlawful for being conducted without jurisdiction; and that the state, represented by the AG, was liable to pay all sums awarded in these proceedings to him in respect of the conduct of the magistrate.
Datadin told Stabroek News yesterday that Chief Justice Ian Chang declined to grant the Constitutional Motion but an appeal was later filed. The attorney said that in light of the magistrate’s ruling they would have to consider whether or not to continue with the appeal.
It was alleged that on December 29, 2004, Sukhdeo, with intent to defraud, forged a document purporting to be a GuyFlag fire and perils claim for US$2 million ($400 million) for the church. Sukhdeo was also accused of trying to obtain the said sum of money by virtue of a forged fire and perils claim form.
According to the prosecution’s case, GuyFlag submitted a bogus claim for payment to its reinsurance agent AON Re and Sukhdeo, who was the head of the sister operation, the National Cooperative Credit Union Limited, was presented as a representative of the church dealing with the fire.
It was when GuyFlag/Sukhdeo allegedly approached a claims adjuster here that the alleged scam was discovered and he was arrested on November 17, 2005 and placed on $50,000 station bail.
He was charged in March of the following year with forgery and endeavouring to obtain upon a forged document and he appeared at the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court on March 21 that year. He was released on $75,000 bail on that occasion.
Over the years the case was beset by delays. Very little evidence was taken during the trial.
