Trinidad: Ex-travel agent to stand trial on fraud charges

(Trinidad Guardian) For­mer trav­el agent Vicky Boodram and her es­tranged hus­band Ravi Ar­joon­s­ingh were yesterday com­mit­ted to stand tri­al on 107 fraud charges in the San Fer­nan­do High Court.

They, along with Boodram Trav­el and Ship Ahoy Cruis­es, were com­mit­ted by San Fer­nan­do Se­nior Mag­is­trate Cher­ril-Anne An­toine who ruled that the pros­e­cu­tion had made out a pri­ma fa­cie case against them. Boodram was de­nied bail and ad­vised of her right to ap­ply for the judge in cham­bers for bail while Ar­joon­s­ingh was grant­ed TT$2 mil­lion ap­proval bail.

The mag­is­trate ex­plained that bail was de­nied to Boodram be­cause of the al­le­ga­tion that she es­caped law­ful cus­tody, the nu­mer­ous mat­ters and the amount of mon­ey the vic­tims lost.

It is al­leg­ed that the vic­tims paid close to TT$1.3 mil­li­on for Caribbean cruis­es ad­ver­tised by the com­pa­ny for April and Au­gust 2011, but the cruis­es failed to ma­te­ri­alise.

The vic­tims were not re­fund­ed.

Boodram owned the com­pa­ny while Ar­joos­ingh was named a di­rec­tor.

They were ini­tial­ly charged with 109 of­fences but two of the charges were dis­missed be­cause the vic­tims had died.

Boodram was al­so charged with two mon­ey laun­der­ing of­fences. Those charges al­leg­ed that in Sep­tem­ber 2010 Boodram pur­chased a Mer­cedes Benz for TT$621,042.45 and in Oc­to­ber 2010 bought a house and land at Palmiste, San Fer­nan­do, for more than $2 mil­li­on, know­ing that the mon­ey was de­rived through fraud­u­lent means.

Spe­cial state pros­e­cu­tor Elaine Greene led ev­i­dence via pa­per com­mit­tal last April, where­by the state­ments of the wit­ness­es were ten­dered in­to ev­i­dence and the de­fence re­quest­ed the wit­ness­es they want­ed for cross-ex­am­ine.

The charg­ing of­fi­cers were Sgt Vinelle Bas­sarath and Sgt Seecha­ran.

At the end of the state’s case, Ar­joos­ingh’s at­tor­neys filed writ­ten sub­mis­sions to the court that the pros­e­cu­tion failed to put for­ward suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to have him com­mit­ted. How­ev­er, the mag­is­trate over­ruled those sub­mis­sions.

Boodram’s at­tor­ney did not file sim­i­lar sub­mis­sions.

As a con­di­tion of his bail, Ar­joon­s­ingh was or­dered to re­port to the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion three times a week. Ar­joon­s­ingh and Boodram had pre­vi­ous­ly sur­ren­dered their pass­ports at the Port- of-Spain Mag­is­trates Court where they face sim­i­lar al­le­ga­tions. Ar­joon­s­ingh was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Jagdeo Singh and Lana Lakhan while Boodram was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Jee­wan Ram­per­sad.