For­mer Caribbean Pres­tige Foun­da­tion (CPF) chair­man Pe­ter Scoon has ap­peared in court charged with de­fraud­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s founder William Munroe of $400,000.

Scoon, 53, the own­er of Me­dia 21 Ltd, was grant­ed $120,000 bail af­ter he ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Maris­sa Gomez in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates Court on Thurs­day charged with fraud­u­lent con­ver­sion.

Ac­cord­ing to the charge, Scoon al­leged­ly took the mon­ey from Munroe in Oc­to­ber 2015 to pro­cure and im­port a stage and 500 chairs. Munroe re­port­ed his for­mer busi­ness as­so­ciate to the Fraud Squad in March 2017 af­ter he re­peat­ed­ly failed to de­liv­er the items and re­fused to re­fund the mon­ey.

Dur­ing his court ap­pear­ance, po­lice pros­e­cu­tor In­sp Ra­jesh Lall ob­ject­ed for bail for Scoon as he claimed that Fraud Squad de­tec­tives were search­ing for him for more than a year be­fore he even­tu­al­ly sur­ren­dered on Tues­day. Lall al­so claimed that Scoon does not have a fixed ad­dress and may be a flight risk.

Scoon’s lawyer Donielle Jones chal­lenged the claims as she stat­ed that he had a clean crim­i­nal record and lives with a friend at Fal­con Street, Ed­in­burgh 500, Ch­agua­nas.

Jones al­so sug­gest­ed that Gomez could ap­ply con­di­tions to her client’s bail to en­sure that he does not flee the coun­try. Gomez agreed to grant Scoon bail but or­dered him to sur­ren­der his pass­port and re­port to po­lice twice week­ly for the du­ra­tion of his case. She al­so or­dered Scoon to im­me­di­ate­ly in­form po­lice if he is plan­ning to move out of his cur­rent ad­dress.

CPF, which or­gan­is­es the an­nu­al In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, is cur­rent­ly chaired by Fay-Ann Lyons-Al­varez. Scoon is ex­pect­ed to reap­pear in court on April 18.