Com­pa­ny Di­rec­tor Ter­rance Hy­po­lite was grant­ed bail when he ap­peared be­fore a Jus­tice of the Peace yes­ter­day charged with fraud.

Hy­po­lite, 63, of Ed­in­burgh 500, Ch­agua­nas, was charged with ut­ter­ing a forged doc­u­ment and at­tempt­ing to ob­tain $4.8 mil­lion dol­lars from the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go by false pre­tences.

He ap­peared be­fore JP Ba­bootee at the Wood­brook Po­lice Sta­tion on Feb­ru­ary 25th.
He was grant­ed bail for $150,000 and or­dered to ap­pear vir­tu­al­ly at the Port of Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court on March 25th.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, it is al­leged, the ac­cused went to a com­mer­cial bank in Diego Mar­tin on Feb­ru­ary 17th 2021, where he pre­sent­ed a Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go cheque, payable to his con­struc­tion busi­ness, in the amount of $4.8 mil­lion dol­lars.

He al­so pro­vid­ed copies of award of con­tract let­ters pur­port­ed­ly is­sued by a spe­cial pur­pose State com­pa­ny to his con­struc­tion com­pa­ny to un­der­take in­fra­struc­tur­al works at a port project in To­co, which was due to start on March 25th 2021.

The cheque was ac­cept­ed as gen­uine by the bank and the pro­ceeds cred­it­ed ‘on hold’ to the com­pa­ny’s busi­ness ac­count sub­ject to ver­i­fi­ca­tion and pro­cess­ing by the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Dur­ing the pro­cess­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion phase, the Cen­tral Bank alert­ed the com­mer­cial bank that the cheque in ques­tion was not is­sued by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and was there­fore fraud­u­lent.

A re­port was made to the Fraud Squad and of­fi­cers con­duct­ing en­quiries found that there was no work con­tract in ex­is­tence be­tween the State Com­pa­ny and the con­struc­tion com­pa­ny. There was al­so no port project at To­co.

Hy­po­lite was ar­rest­ed on Wednes­day 24th Feb­ru­ary, 2021, by Fraud Squad of­fi­cers and charged with the of­fences by WPC Kennedy on Thurs­day 25th Feb­ru­ary, 2021.