Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The as­sets of sev­en peo­ple and six for­eign used car com­pa­nies will re­main frozen while ANSA Bank Lim­it­ed pur­sues its al­most $27 mil­lion law­suit against them over an al­leged fraud con­spir­a­cy.

De­liv­er­ing a writ­ten de­ci­sion yes­ter­day morn­ing, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad re­ject­ed an ap­pli­ca­tion from one of the par­ties to lift an in­junc­tion, which was grant­ed against them in Oc­to­ber, last year.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that the bank jus­ti­fied the need for strin­gent re­lief by pro­vid­ing plau­si­ble ev­i­dence that out­lined a suf­fi­cient­ly strong case against the group.

He said: “Giv­en the na­ture of the al­le­ga­tions in this case which out­line a well-con­ceived and ex­e­cut­ed mul­ti-lay­ered fraud­u­lent de­sign which al­leged­ly in­volved used car com­pa­nies, bank em­ploy­ees, and mem­bers of the pub­lic who worked in tan­dem to de­fraud the bank, the court holds the view that there is suf­fi­cient risk of pos­si­ble dis­si­pa­tion of as­sets to jus­ti­fy the grant of the re­lief.”

The de­fen­dants in the case are for­mer bank em­ploy­ees Randy Gottsleben and his wife, Adri­ana Ram­s­ingh, Dwyane Ro­jas, Zaria Sankar, Navin­dra Ram­bar­ran, Rey­vaan Ram­per­sad and Ker­ry Ram­sa­roop along with Cey­lon Mar­ket­ing Lim­it­ed, Joalex Au­to Lim­it­ed, Mi­va Im­port Ex­port Con­sul­tan­cy Lim­it­ed, Arnold Ram­jass T/A Arnold Ram­jass Au­to Me­chan­i­cal and Paint­ing Garage, Di­a­mond Con­cep­tion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and It’s A Deal Lim­it­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the bank’s court fil­ings, it be­gan in­ves­ti­gat­ing the group af­ter their pur­port­ed il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties were re­vealed by a whistle­blow­er in a let­ter sent to bank di­rec­tor Lar­ry Howai in June, last year.

The bank is claim­ing that the group con­spired to­geth­er to present fraud­u­lent doc­u­ments and make fraud­u­lent rep­re­sen­ta­tions to se­cure over $27 mil­lion in loans.

It is con­tend­ing that its for­mer em­ploy­ees breached the terms and con­di­tions of their con­trac­tors by con­duct­ing them­selves in a man­ner that was like­ly to de­stroy or se­ri­ous­ly dam­age their re­la­tion­ship with the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion.

In grant­i­ng the freez­ing or­der, late last year, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered the de­fen­dants to dis­close in­for­ma­tion on all their as­sets ex­ceed­ing $10,000 in val­ue.

Af­ter Jus­tice Seep­er­sad dis­charged the in­junc­tion against the car com­pa­nies, the bank suc­cess­ful­ly ap­pealed to the Court of Ap­peal to have it re­in­stat­ed.

Dur­ing the hear­ing yes­ter­day, Se­nior Coun­sel Ian Ben­jamin, who led the bank’s le­gal team, point­ed out that some of the de­fen­dants on­ly made the re­quired dis­clo­sure the day be­fore.

“It sim­ply de­fies be­lief. We must not play games with the court,” Ben­jamin said.

He al­so point­ed out that in their re­sponse some of the com­pa­nies claimed that they did not have any as­sets ex­ceed­ing the val­ue set by the court.

At the end of the hear­ing, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad in­di­cat­ed that the case could go to tri­al be­fore the end of the year pro­vid­ed that the par­ties meet the dead­lines for fil­ing ev­i­dence in­clud­ing wit­ness state­ments.

The case is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing on June 10.

The bank is al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Mar­celle Fer­di­nand and Bryan Mc­Cutcheon, of JD Sel­l­i­er and Com­pa­ny.

Ro­jas was rep­re­sent­ed by Sad­dam Ho­sein, while Vashisht Seep­er­sad rep­re­sent­ed Sankar.

Ram­bar­ran was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Jared Ja­groo, and Natasha Bis­ram, while Ra­jiv Rick­hi rep­re­sent­ed Ram­per­sad. Avril Gay rep­re­sent­ed Ram­sa­roop, while Roland Bain rep­re­sent­ed the com­pa­nies. Ram­s­ingh was rep­re­sent­ed by An­dre Kooma­ls­ingh.