Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A for­mer tem­po­rary clerk at the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) has been grant­ed $100,000 bail af­ter ap­pear­ing in court on six crim­i­nal charges re­lat­ed to the al­leged pro­duc­tion of fal­si­fied cer­tifi­cates.

David Williams was grant­ed bail when he ap­peared in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court on Mon­day to an­swer three mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice charges and three for al­leged­ly breach­ing the Com­put­er Mis­use Act and the In­come Tax Act.

Williams was not called up­on to plead to the mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice charges but was al­lowed to plead not guilty to the three oth­er sum­ma­ry of­fences.

BIR le­gal con­sul­tant Evans Welch did not ob­ject to bail for Williams.

Ac­cord­ing to the charges, Williams is ac­cused of us­ing a col­league’s com­put­er to pro­duce fraud­u­lent Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) Clear­ance Cer­tifi­cates and In­come Tax Clear­ance Cer­tifi­cates for peo­ple un­known in ex­change for $10,000 in June, last year.

In Sep­tem­ber, last year, the BIR pub­lished no­tices in­di­cat­ing that the cer­tifi­cates al­leged­ly is­sued by Williams were not au­tho­rised.

Williams was ar­rest­ed via war­rant af­ter an in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed by crim­i­nal tax in­ves­ti­ga­tor Rawle Sookhoo.

The cer­tifi­cates in ques­tion were all in the name of Spe­cial­ist Shoot­ers Train­ing Cen­tre Lim­it­ed.

The com­pa­ny and its own­er, Brent Thomas, re­cent­ly shot to fame af­ter they sued over a firearm au­dit con­duct­ed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and his ar­rest in Bar­ba­dos and sub­se­quent re­turn to Trinidad on a Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tem (RSS) air­craft.

In a re­cent judg­ment, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad ruled that the man­ner of Thomas’ de­ten­tion showed a clear at­tempt to by­pass the law­ful pro­ce­dure of re­quest­ing his ex­tra­di­tion.

Ad­dress­ing the search war­rants used on the busi­ness, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad took is­sue with the oaths and in­for­ma­tion giv­en by the in­ves­ti­ga­tors to the mag­is­trate and jus­tice of the peace that grant­ed them.

Deal­ing with the charges laid against Thomas, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad not­ed that Thomas was li­censed to im­port and pos­sess the au­to­mat­ic weapons and ex­plo­sives that he was charged with, by suc­ces­sive Po­lice Com­mis­sion­ers.

He al­so not­ed that Thomas’ com­pa­ny sup­plied such weapons to var­i­ous arms of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices as he stayed the charges.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad is in the process of as­sess­ing the com­pen­sa­tion owed to Thomas and his com­pa­ny while the State ap­peals his judg­ment.