Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

Movi­eTowne, the cin­e­ma com­plex owned by busi­ness­man Derek Chin, owes the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) $93 mil­lion in un­paid tax­es and penal­ties.

It spans a pe­ri­od of 20 years. Movi­eTowne, lo­cat­ed at In­vaders Bay, Mu­cu­rapo, is 21 years old.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that some of Movi­eTowne’s ac­counts were gar­nished by the State.

Chin yes­ter­day con­firmed the amount owed to the State and said that the mat­ter was in ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“A pay­ment plan was put in place,” Chin told Guardian Me­dia.

It is now un­der­stood that the ac­tion by the BIR is part of a na­tion­wide dri­ve to re­cov­er some $15 bil­lion in tax­es owed by var­i­ous en­ti­ties.

Movi­eTowne has three cine­plex­es in Trinidad - in Port-of-Spain, San Fer­nan­do and To­ba­go - and one in Guyana. Apart from the cin­e­mas, the Movi­eTowne com­plex­es fea­ture re­tail shops, food fran­chis­es and even casi­nos.

Chin is al­so look­ing to ex­pand in­to Ja­maica with the Movi­eTowne brand.

“Re­cent­ly, we have been in talks with some peo­ple who are in­ter­est­ed in us go­ing to Ja­maica. We would like to be­come the equiv­a­lent of San­dals. So hope­ful­ly, we will go in­to Ja­maica lat­er this year,” he had told the Busi­ness Guardian in an in­ter­view last No­vem­ber.

He had said that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed busi­ness­es such as cin­e­mas. In his in­ter­view, he had lament­ed the dif­fi­cul­ties of do­ing busi­ness in T&T.

“We just cre­at­ed a beau­ti­ful di­nosaur park, some­thing that many coun­tries would want to have. We gave Trinidad the first one in the Caribbean. The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion de­cid­ed to clas­si­fy these mov­ing gi­gan­tic ex­hibits as toys de­spite telling them they are not toys and are ed­u­ca­tion­al ex­hibits high­light­ing the Juras­sic era. They con­tin­ued to clas­si­fy them as toys while any kinder­garten kid will tell you oth­er­wise,” he had said.

On Tues­day, Guardian Me­dia al­so re­port­ed that the ac­counts of the T&T Ra­dio Net­work (TTRN), owned by An­tho­ny “Chi­nese Laun­dry” Chow Lin On, the par­ent com­pa­ny of ra­dio sta­tions 96.1 We FM, STAR 94.7 and 107.7 Mu­sic for Life, have been gar­nished by the State.

This is due to the fact that Chow Lin On owes $34 mil­lion to the BIR for un­paid tax­es and penal­ties for the pe­ri­od 2015-2024.

In a state­ment post­ed on­line yes­ter­day, Chow Lin On re­vealed he had told his staff he is work­ing with au­thor­i­ties to re­solve the mat­ter of pay­ing his tax­es “as swift­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble”.

Chow Lin On said there “has been a lot of noise and mis­in­for­ma­tion be­ing shared in the pub­lic do­main re­gard­ing TTRN”. How­ev­er, he said it will not de­ter him as he fo­cus­es on re­solv­ing the sit­u­a­tion. He said he is com­mit­ted to ful­fill­ing his oblig­a­tions to the BIR.

He thanked his staff of 84 em­ploy­ees for their “un­wa­ver­ing loy­al­ty and sup­port over the years”. How­ev­er, the let­ter did not ac­knowl­edge re­ports that in a staff meet­ing, the work­ers were in­formed that cuts had to be made, while the com­pa­ny’s se­cu­ri­ty ex­pens­es were un­der con­sid­er­a­tion.

Chow Lin On said, “The past few years have been chal­leng­ing for many busi­ness­es, cre­at­ing a rip­ple ef­fect that has al­so im­pact­ed our busi­ness op­er­a­tions. De­spite these chal­lenges, we are de­ter­mined to over­come this hur­dle as we recog­nise the cru­cial role that that in­de­pen­dent me­dia plays in our so­ci­ety and re­main fo­cused on our long-term vi­sion.”