Ste­fan Steede, 45, of San­ta Cruz was charged with mon­ey laun­der­ing for $297,000, and ob­tain­ing valu­able se­cu­ri­ty by false pre­tences. 
He was grant­ed bail for $600,000 by Cou­va Mag­is­trate Alexan­der Prince on De­cem­ber 1st, 2022. De­tails fol­low in this press re­lease... 

 
A San­ta Cruz man was grant­ed bail in the sum of $600,000 by Cou­va Mag­is­trate Alexan­der Prince on De­cem­ber 1st, 2022, af­ter be­ing charged with Mon­ey Laun­der­ing in the sum of $297,000, and Ob­tain­ing a Valu­able Se­cu­ri­ty by False Pre­tences.  

 
Ste­fan Steede, 45, was charged on No­vem­ber 30th, 2022 by of­fi­cers at­tached to the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau (ACIB), fol­low­ing ad­vice re­ceived from Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, Roger Gas­pard SC. Re­port­ed­ly, in Au­gust 2012.

 
Steede was con­tract­ed by the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion to pur­chase and de­liv­er a quan­ti­ty of items. An in­voice was sub­mit­ted and the ac­cused ten­dered a pay­ment in the sum of $297,000.  

It was lat­er dis­cov­ered that the items were nei­ther pur­chased nor de­liv­ered to the Cor­po­ra­tion and all at­tempts to ob­tain a re­fund of the pay­ment from Steede proved fu­tile. It was fur­ther dis­cov­ered that the ac­cused al­leged­ly ‘laun­dered’ the mon­ey via over-the-counter trans­ac­tions, with­drawals from Au­to­mat­ed Teller Ma­chines and Point of Sales pay­ments.  

A re­port was made to the ACIB and in­ves­ti­ga­tions were con­duct­ed be­tween 2020 and 2022 re­sult­ing in Steede’s ar­rest. 

The in­ves­ti­ga­tions were su­per­vised by Snr. Supt. Singh and Supt Ab­bott and were con­duct­ed by ASP (Ag.) Bry­on Daniel, In­spec­tors McMil­lan and Dick, Sgt Co­dring­ton and PC Pitt.