Manager details regular checks as Bahado-Singh missed London trip
Published:Thursday | May 12, 2022 | 12:11 AMTanesha Mundle/Staff Reporter
A manager at Petrojam testified Wednesday that, while on a leadership trip in London in February 2018, he was informed that then board chairman Perceval Bahado-Singh would be joining the delegation but he never turned up.
The one-week trip (February 25 to March 3) is among a batch of the overseas expeditions the prosecution is alleging that Bahado-Singh made claims for but did not attend.
The then board chairman and then general manager Floyd Grindley are being tried in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court on several fraud-related charges stemming from allegations that Bahado-Singh had submitted claims amounting to US$73,620 between December 2016 and May 2018 for overseas travel he did not make.
Grindley is alleged to have aided and abetted the ex-chairman in the process used to make the fraudulent claims.
Safety Environment Quality Assurance and Security Manager Leon Jarrett, during his evidence-in-chief on Day Three of the trial, said that the London trip was originally scheduled for a delegation comprising himself, Grindley, and Chief Financial Officer Delroy Brown.
According to Jarrett, the purpose of the trip was to meet with overseas insurance brokers and would include settling outstanding claims and the execution of an annual risk survey.
However, he said, after he arrived in London, he was notified by Grindley’s assistant that Bahado-Singh would be joining the team and that a reservation was made for him to be accommodated at the same hotel where he, Jarrett, was staying in the England capital.
“Having been told to expect the chairman, did you make any effort to ascertain during the course of your stay whether he was there?” asked Queen’s Counsel Caroline Hay, who is prosecuting the matter on a fiat from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
“I periodically checked with the front desk to see if he had arrived,” Jarrett replied, pointing out that he had checked in the morning “twice per day”.
Jarrett said that, up to when he was leaving the hotel on March 3, Singh had not checked in.
Apart from Grindley’s assistant, the witness said, while he was in London, Petrojam’s chief accountant also sent him a text message asking if Bahado-Singh was in London. He answered her in the negative.
He also recalled that he had received an email thread copied to him from Grindley. The assistant and Bahado-Singh were also copied.
When asked if any of those emails were directed to him or to Brown, Jarrett said: “The mail was directed to both of us. It was telling us, ‘Gentlemen, see you in London’.”
That email, he said, was sent by the former chairman.
Jarrett will undergo cross-examination when the matter resumes today before Parish Judge Maxine Ellis.
Grindley is being represented by attorneys-at-law K.D. Knight, QC, and Bianca Samuels, while Bahado-Singh is being represented by attorneys-at-law Bert Samuels and Matthew Hyatt.