Court dismisses fraud case against former casino manager

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A for­mer man­ag­er of the Is­land Club Group of Com­pa­nies has been freed of fraud due to de­lays in pros­e­cut­ing him. 

The case against Ab­bas Khale­di was dis­missed by Mag­is­trate Re­han­na Ali in the Tu­na­puna Dis­trict Court on Wednes­day.

The out­come of the case came months af­ter the com­pa­ny's for­mer di­rec­tor and se­cu­ri­ty man­ag­er, In­grid Dop­son, was freed of 11 fraud charges in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances. 

Khale­di was ac­cused of fraud­u­lent­ly con­vert­ing a Nis­san pan­el van for his own ben­e­fit in 2015. 

Through­out the pro­ceed­ings, Khale­di's lawyers, led by Ra­jiv Rick­hi, raised con­cerns over a lack of ev­i­dence against him and filed ap­pli­ca­tions chal­leng­ing the ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty, re­li­a­bil­i­ty and fair­ness of the pros­e­cu­tor's pro­posed ev­i­dence. 

They claimed that due to de­lays in the case, sev­er­al key wit­ness­es died and would not be able to be cross-ex­am­ined over their claims against Khale­di. 

When the case came up for hear­ing, Khale­di's lawyers were ready to pro­ceed, but the pros­e­cu­tor Orin Kerr, the sub­sti­tute po­lice com­plainant and the State's wit­ness­es were not present.

Mag­is­trate Ali agreed to dis­miss the case due to the pro­longed his­to­ry of de­lays and non-com­pli­ance. 

Khale­di was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Shve­ta Paras­ram, Ria Ra­moutar and Mikkell Sama­roo. 

In Ju­ly 2017, Dop­son was slapped with five charges for ob­tain­ing mon­ey un­der false pre­tences, five charges for ut­ter­ing a forged doc­u­ment and one charge for fraud­u­lent con­ver­sa­tion.

The charges came af­ter the casi­no's Amer­i­can own­er David Migliore re­port­ed that she had al­leged­ly forged a doc­u­ment which pur­port­ed to ap­point her, her sis­ter and Khale­di to the board of an­oth­er com­pa­ny he owned.

He al­leged that Dop­son had used the forged doc­u­ment to pro­cure mon­ey to be paid to her sis­ter and Khale­di. 

The case against Dop­son was at the pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry stage for sev­er­al years be­fore it was trans­ferred to Mas­ter Mar­garet Sookraj-Goswa­mi based on the pro­vi­sions of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Amend­ment Act (AJI­PAA).

The leg­is­la­tion sought to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem by re­plac­ing pro­tract­ed pre­lim­i­nary en­quiries be­fore mag­is­trates with quick­er suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ings be­fore High Court Mas­ters. 

Dur­ing a hear­ing on Jan­u­ary 8, last year, Mas­ter Sookraj-Goswa­mi set dead­lines for pros­e­cu­tors to file the in­dict­ment against Dop­son. 

Rick­hi, who al­so rep­re­sent­ed Dop­son, suc­cess­ful­ly made an ap­pli­ca­tion to dis­miss the charges af­ter the dead­line was not com­plied with and pros­e­cu­tors failed to give a suf­fi­cient ex­pla­na­tion for such. 

In 2013, Migliore, a res­i­dent of New Jer­sey, was charged in the Unit­ed States for tax eva­sion.

 He was ac­cused of fail­ing to pay the US Gov­ern­ment tax­es on more than US$3.9 mil­lion in in­come he earned be­tween 2009 and 2011 from his busi­ness in­ter­ests in T&T, in­clud­ing the casi­no, which was lo­cat­ed in Grand Bazaar. 

In 2015, Migliore plead­ed guilty to the charges and was sen­tenced to 46 months in prison. He was al­so or­dered to pay al­most US$1.3 mil­lion in resti­tu­tion to the US gov­ern­ment.