A customer service representative and a procurement clerk of Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL) who are accused of stealing and selling a quantity of sheeted copper cables from the company’s storage bond were granted bail yesterday in the sum of $400,000 each when they appeared before Acting Chief Magistrate Melissa Robertson.

Rupert Lord Bakker

Jamall Forde

Jamall Forde, 22, of 174 Lodge Housing Scheme and Rupert Lord Bakker of Mahaica were both jointly charged with five counts of larceny by clerk or servant and five counts of forgery, to which they entered not guilty pleas at the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court.

Forde and Bakker both denied that between October 20 and 29, at GPL, they forged several GPL requisition notes and  while being clerks at the company they also stole 118 rolls of sheeted copper cables with a total value of over $3.6M.

Forde’s lawyer Nigel Hughes applied for reasonable bail for him on the grounds that his client is currently a procurement clerk at GPL and he had an unblemished record prior to these cases.

He said that his client will return to court if granted bail and he will not interfere with any of the witnesses in the matters.

Meanwhile, Bakker’s lawyer Patrice Henry also applied for reasonable bail for him on the grounds that 64 rolls of the sheeted copper cables were recovered at Prem’s Electronic Store on Alexander Street. He noted that the offences were all bailable and added that his client has fully cooperated with the police during the investigations. He said that his client is still a customer service representative of GPL.

Prosecutor Deneashwar Mahindranauth made no objection to the bail applications but stated that 64 rolls of the sheeted copper cables were indeed recovered from the store and are currently lodged at the Brickdam Police Station.

The cases were all transferred to Court Two for December 7.

The prosecution stated that Bakker had forged the requisition documents and afterwards contacted Forde who accompanied him to uplift the cables from the GPL storage bond in Sophia, and later sold a quantity of the cables to Prem’s Electronic Store.