The mat­ter in­volv­ing the 11 men charged with de­fraud­ing Par­lia­ment of close to $270,000 has been ad­journed to next year. The 11 reap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Mur­ray in the Port-of-Spain First Court yes­ter­day. Dan­ny Lutch­man, Ir­win Fran­cois, Ian Williams, Chema Mark, Ken­rick Davis, Richard Sime­on, Keion Fras­er, Joel Au­gus­tine, Ul­ric Davis, William Le­tren and Wai­hung Low are be­fore the court to an­swer the charges laid in Jan­u­ary last year.

Mur­ray heard from In­sp Cal­lis­ter Charles that a state at­tor­ney was yet to be ap­point­ed in the mat­ter, in which Sgt Ramd­hanie Dipc­hand of the Fraud Squad is the com­plainant. Charles said Dipc­hand was ab­sent yes­ter­day be­cause he was on a train­ing course, which would be com­plet­ed in Ju­ly 2013 but there were sev­er­al is­sues that still need­ed to be cleared up.

Mur­ray ad­journed the mat­ter to Jan­u­ary 31, as she ad­vised at­tor­ney John Heath that "cer­tain op­tions may be­come avail­able to both sides" at that time.The charges against the 11 are that be­tween Ju­ly 1 and No­vem­ber 30, 2010, they con­spired to de­fraud the Of­fice of the Par­lia­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go by false­ly pre­tend­ing to be em­ployed with con­stituen­cy of­fices in La Brea, Princes Town, San Fer­nan­do, Cou­va South, St Au­gus­tine and Diego Mar­tin and re­ceiv­ing month­ly salaries to­talling $269,938.43. At the time the charge was laid, Lutch­man was a par­lia­men­tary pay­roll clerk with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for prepar­ing pay­roll sheets for Red House staff.