Officials from the Special Organized Crime Unit (SOCU) on Wednesday raided a property belonging to principals of the Accelerated Capital Firm Inc (ACFI) at Coldingen, East Coast Demerara during which equipment containing records of their clients were seized and this has caused a halt in the repayment process which commenced just days ago.
Attorney for the company’s principals Ateeka Ishmael and Yuri Garcia Dominguez, Dexter Todd yesterday told Stabroek News that officials from SOCU showed up at his clients’ house on Wednes-day afternoon and presented a search warrant which allows them to carry out a search at the premises.
During the process, Todd said several items including computers and cellular phones were seized.
“They took all their computers, they took all their phones, they took some documents, birth certificates, marriage certificate, the children’s laptop which they were doing their schooling, everything they took,” Todd said.
However, no money was recovered, Todd said. “Of course the search was to retrieve and seize any foreign currency and any local Guyanese currency and any financial records and stuff of the principal,” he noted.
Contacted for a comment yesterday afternoon, Head of SOCU Fazil Karimbaksh told Stabroek News that he was not at liberty to disclose any informaiton about any operations carried out by the unit. “Usually we don’t disclose any information about SOCU’s operation to the media or to anybody,” Karimbaksh said.
This move came just two days after the company began a repayment process which was expected to see its 17,000 clients eventually receiving their invested capital. On Monday when the repayment commenced, 27 persons received their invested capital.
However, the exercise which was scheduled to continue during this week has since been discontinued.
At a press conference last Saturday, Dominguez announced plans to commence repayment from October 12th of the invested capital to all of the 17,000 clients. He had said this is being done since the firm is not licensed to operate here and has been forced to cease all of its operations.
“Accelerated Capital Firm is ready to resume payments back after 36 days (after a halt) based on a situation everybody knows about…….On the 12th of this month (October) we are going to resume,” Dominguez had said.
Todd had explained that in light of the large volume of clients, the repayment process will begin with 100 persons receiving their capital investments. He said there will be a seven-day break after repayment is made to the first 100 clients after which they will continue with another 100. This system will be applied until all 17,000 are repaid.
The ACFI has a total of 17,000 clients who altogether invested hundreds of million dollars. Only a small percentage of this amount, 69 to be exact, came forward during the investigation to provide statements resulting in the charges being laid by the police.
“Handicapped”
Almost two months ago, the police had arrested the couple after they had launched an investigation into what is being describ-ed as a huge Ponzi scheme.
The Guyana Police Force has said that Dominguez, 34, a naturalised Guyanese of Cuban origin, and his wife, Ishmael, 32, both of Track A, Coldingen, East Coast Demerara, were detained as part of an ongoing investigation of alleged fraud.
To date, the principals are facing close to 80 charges of conspiring with other persons to obtain monies by false pretense. They were released on a total of approximately $30 million bail.
According to Todd, the raid means that SOCU has now intensified the investigation.
As such, he said that the repayment of the capital investment has been automatically halted since his clients did not have any instrument which they can use to continue this process.
“…By that I mean, they don’t know their laptops or their phones which would afford them the code numbers for the coins, the serial numbers in which they can do the transfer. It doesn’t afford them an opportunity to do any sort of reconciliation, so they don’t know who the names of their investors, they don’t know how to get in contact with them, they don’t know what amount they have invested. So really and truly they have halted all efforts made to repay people their capital investment,” Todd explained.
Todd described the raid at the property as an attempt to stop repayments.
“It is clear that the money invested by individuals are now jeopardized in the sense that SOCU now has an interest in those funds which is quite unfortunate but it’s a contradiction of what the government did say through their Attorney General,” the attorney said.
“They had said that the people would get back their money. Now the people are getting back their money and SOCU now has come to seize the money,” he added.
Currently, Todd said his clients are “handicapped” since they are uncertain about what will be their next move. “Nothing they can do but to sit back. They are handicapped now. They have absolutely nothing. They don’t know where to start,” he noted.
Dominguez and Ishmael are scheduled to appear in court again this morning.
This time, Todd said they will be charged for operating here without a licence under the Securi-ties Act. The other charge he said falls under the Consumers Affair Act.
Dominguez had claimed that ACFI is registered to operate internationally. However, upon arrival in Guyana, ACFI was not granted the required licence to carry out its business here.
