New NHSL chairman faces scrutiny over previous fraud-related charges

Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­[email protected]

The new chair­man of the board of Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al He­li­copter Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (NHSL), Bar­ry Sama­roo, said there is noth­ing pre­vent­ing him from act­ing in the po­si­tion, as he faces no cur­rent crim­i­nal charges.

“For clar­i­ty, all charges in both mat­ters ref­er­enced were ful­ly dis­missed by the court long be­fore my ap­point­ment. I am not the sub­ject of any crim­i­nal charge, nor am I be­fore any court in any on­go­ing mat­ter. These facts are ac­cu­rate and ver­i­fi­able,” Sama­roo told Guardian Me­dia.

His de­fence comes af­ter his post-elec­tion ap­point­ment drew crit­i­cism with­in the state agency, ac­cord­ing to a Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion. NHSL sources con­tact­ed the me­dia to ex­press con­cern, cit­ing Sama­roo’s past le­gal en­coun­ters over the last five years.

Sama­roo’s ap­point­ment as chair­man has not yet been pub­licly an­nounced. He re­placed Lar­ry McIn­tosh, who is still list­ed as chair­man on the NHSL web­site.

In 2020 and 2022, Sama­roo was charged by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in two sep­a­rate fraud-re­lat­ed mat­ters.

In Ju­ly 2022, ac­cord­ing to a TTPS press re­lease, the 56-year-old was charged with two counts of ut­ter­ing a forged doc­u­ment.

“Bar­ry Sama­roo, a busi­ness­man of Ch­agua­nas, was al­so charged with at­tempt­ing to ob­tain the sum of $2.1 mil­lion by false pre­tence … He was grant­ed bail with sure­ty in the sum of $300,000. Re­ports in­di­cate that dur­ing the pe­ri­od June 1, 2021, to Au­gust 30, 2021, a man made an ap­pli­ca­tion at a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion for a mort­gage debt con­sol­i­da­tion loan in the sum of $2.1 mil­lion on an ex­ist­ing loan, for two parcels of land val­ued at $2,240,000 and $750,000. In sup­port of the ap­pli­ca­tion, the man sub­mit­ted two val­u­a­tion re­ports from a val­u­a­tions com­pa­ny, which were ac­cept­ed as gen­uine but lat­er found to be false,” the re­lease stat­ed.

Two years ear­li­er, in Ju­ly 2020, Sama­roo and a fe­male rel­a­tive were charged with is­su­ing a dis­hon­oured cheque, ac­cord­ing to a TTPS me­dia re­lease.

“Two per­sons were ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers of the Fraud Squad on Fri­day, Ju­ly 17th, for ob­tain­ing goods by use of a dis­hon­oured cheque … On June 15, 2020, Carib Brew­ery Ltd re­port­ed that on Ju­ly 15, 2019, they sold bev­er­ages val­ued at $36,351.32 to Food Savers, lo­cat­ed at 11 As­saraff Road, Char­lieville. Food Savers al­leged­ly made pay­ment via a Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed cheque dat­ed 15/7/19, payable to Carib Brew­ery Lim­it­ed and drawn on the ac­count of Ar­ron De­vel­op­ment Ltd. The cheque was lat­er re­turned with the no­ta­tion ‘in­suf­fi­cient funds.’ Bar­ry Sama­roo and In­di­ra Sama­roo of Char­lieville were ar­rest­ed and charged for ob­tain­ing goods val­ued at $36,351.32 by use of a dis­hon­oured cheque,” the re­lease stat­ed.

Sama­roo told Guardian Me­dia that both charges were ul­ti­mate­ly dropped.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the TTPS for con­fir­ma­tion of the dropped charges, but no re­sponse was pro­vid­ed in time. Sources in­di­cat­ed that an of­fi­cial up­date has yet to be pre­pared for the reg­istry of­fice by the in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cer.

Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our was al­so con­tact­ed for com­ment, but de­clined to pro­vide a re­sponse.

Ac­cord­ing to his LinkedIn pro­file, Sama­roo served as an NHSL di­rec­tor from 2010. A 2016 gov­ern­ment doc­u­ment con­firmed his board mem­ber­ship that year, and NHSL records in­di­cate he re­tired as a di­rec­tor in Jan­u­ary 2017.

Com­pa­ny reg­istry doc­u­ments show he was al­so pre­vi­ous­ly list­ed as a di­rec­tor of Ar­ron De­vel­op­ment Ltd, a hous­ing and land de­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny. While he was no longer list­ed as a di­rec­tor as of Au­gust 2022, the com­pa­ny’s re­main­ing di­rec­tors, In­di­ra and Navon Sama­roo, share a list­ed Char­lieville ad­dress with him.

For­mer­ly the He­li­copter Unit of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, NHSL be­gan op­er­a­tions in 1990 and is based in Cam­den, Cou­va. It al­so owns the Fore­shore He­li­pad in Mu­cu­rapo.

The com­pa­ny pro­vides he­li­copter trans­port ser­vices for off­shore oil and gas pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies—in­clud­ing the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), EOG Re­sources, British Gas, and BHP Bil­li­ton—as well as gov­ern­ment off­shore search and res­cue, emer­gency med­ical trans­fers, VIP trans­port, pho­tog­ra­phy ser­vices, sight­see­ing, train­ing, and en­gi­neer­ing sup­port.

NHSL op­er­ates six he­li­copters and em­ploys around 140 peo­ple. The gov­ern­ment owns 82 per cent of the com­pa­ny, while NGC holds the re­main­ing 18 per cent. De­spite its size, NHSL is the small­est of three he­li­copter com­pa­nies ser­vic­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s oil and gas sec­tor, with PHI and Bris­tow He­li­copters main­tain­ing larg­er fleets.

State fund­ing for NHSL has been sig­nif­i­cant: the com­pa­ny re­ceived more than $125.9 mil­lion in fis­cal years 2019 and 2020, with an­oth­er $40 mil­lion bud­get­ed in 2021.

In No­vem­ber 2019, a Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee ex­am­in­ing NHSL’s au­dit­ed ac­counts and bal­ance sheets from fis­cal 2008 to 2014 flagged sev­er­al is­sues. An­nu­al au­dits had been back­logged and not sub­mit­ted to Par­lia­ment since 2014, as re­quired. The com­mit­tee al­so not­ed the ab­sence of an in­ter­nal au­dit unit, with on­ly a board au­dit sub­com­mit­tee in place.

Some au­dits, in­clud­ing the 2018 au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment, were lat­er sub­mit­ted, re­port­ing a loss of $86.5 mil­lion for fis­cal 2018. The 2017 au­dit­ed ac­counts record­ed a loss of $46.2 mil­lion.