Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A vet­er­an San Fer­nan­do at­tor­ney has been com­mit­ted to stand tri­al for al­leged­ly de­fraud­ing the State of $52,000 in stamp du­ty for a prop­er­ty.

Ravi Gool­jar, a 66-year-old for­mer State pros­e­cu­tor with over 35 years ser­vice as an at­tor­ney-at-law, was com­mit­ted to stand tri­al at the end of his suf­fi­cien­cy hear­ing be­fore High Court Mas­ter Kim­i­tria Gray, yes­ter­day.

Mas­ter Gray ruled that there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed by pros­e­cu­tors to war­rant Gool­jar fac­ing tri­al for ut­ter­ing a forged doc­u­ment and cheat­ing the pub­lic rev­enue.

The charges stemmed from an al­leged in­ci­dent that oc­curred at the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s Of­fice in San Fer­nan­do on June 11, 2014.

Gool­jar is ac­cused of pre­sent­ing a deed of con­veyance which al­leged­ly con­tained a false stamp du­ty mark­ing, which pur­port­ed to show that the trans­ac­tion was ex­empt from stamp du­ty.

The deed was ini­tial­ly ac­cept­ed as gen­uine and reg­is­tered, but was sub­se­quent­ly dis­cov­ered to be fraud­u­lent.

The stamp du­ty that would have been re­quired was $52,000.

Gool­jar was al­so charged by the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) for sim­i­lar of­fences and was com­mit­ted to stand tri­al at the end of a pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate’s Court in 2022.

He is yet to go on tri­al sep­a­rate­ly on those charges.

As part of her de­ci­sion, Mas­ter Gary grant­ed Gool­jar $300,000 bail.

She al­so or­dered that he ap­pear be­fore Jus­tice Gillian Scot­land on Oc­to­ber 28 to set a date for his tri­al.

The charges were laid by crim­i­nal tax in­ves­ti­ga­tor Adesh Ramdeo and the case is be­ing pros­e­cut­ed by BIR le­gal con­sul­tant Evans Welch.