JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter a 52-year-old Cunu­pia woman, who plead­ed guilty to mon­ey laun­der­ing, was sen­tenced to four years, six months, and 24 days in prison on Feb­ru­ary 19, a High Court judge has or­dered that the mon­ey be con­fis­cat­ed un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act (POCA).

Nir­mala Tam­bie was ar­rest­ed in De­cem­ber 2024 af­ter $618,283 and US$18,796 were found at her Jack­man Trace, Es­mer­al­da Road home on March 2, 2023.

She was de­ter­mined to have pos­sessed the mon­ey, know­ing or hav­ing rea­son­able grounds to sus­pect it was crim­i­nal prop­er­ty, con­sti­tut­ing pro­ceeds from lar­ce­ny by ser­vant and em­bez­zle­ment from Gable X So­lu­tions Ltd be­tween Jan­u­ary and Sep­tem­ber 2022.

In her 19-page rul­ing on March 10, Jus­tice Sherene Mur­ray-Bai­ley found it ap­pro­pri­ate to con­fis­cate the mon­ey, not­ing that “the sums in­volved were sub­stan­tial” and that Tam­bie ben­e­fit­ed from the com­mis­sion of mon­ey laun­der­ing.

The judge em­pha­sised that Tam­bie had no le­git­i­mate sources of in­come to jus­ti­fy pos­ses­sion of such a large sum, and her three bank ac­counts held min­i­mal bal­ances to­talling $1,773.95.

Mur­ray-Bai­ley or­dered Tam­bie to pay $744,709.77, the to­tal val­ue of the monies seized, with­in three months, or serve a ten-year prison term.

The or­der will be sat­is­fied by re­leas­ing the seized cash and ac­crued in­ter­est from the Comp­trol­ler of Ac­counts.

Ex­e­cu­tion of the or­der was stayed for six weeks to fa­cil­i­tate any ap­peals.

The judge ex­plained that POCA re­quires con­fis­ca­tion amounts to be the less­er of two fig­ures: the amount seized or the re­al­is­able amount, which may in­crease if the per­son in­vests or oth­er­wise in­creas­es the il­le­gal­ly ob­tained funds.

She urged au­thor­i­ties to act swift­ly, stress­ing that de­lays un­der­mine POCA’s ob­jec­tives, in­crease the risk of as­set dis­si­pa­tion, and frus­trate pub­lic in­ter­est.