Court freezes bank accounts of Chinese nationals

(Trinidad Guardian): A High Court judge has grant­ed an or­der pro­hibit­ing two Chi­nese na­tion­als from dis­pos­ing of close to $10 mil­lion which had been paid by a State com­pa­ny for the con­struc­tion of a gov­ern­ment school.

Jus­tice Ricky Rahim grant­ed the or­der to Chi­na Build­ing Tech­nique Group Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd and two of its prin­ci­pals dur­ing a hear­ing at the Port-of-Spain High Court yes­ter­day.

The freez­ing or­der re­stricts Yong­goa Pan, Li­jun Wang and Chi­na Build­ing Tech­nique Ltd from dis­pos­ing of the mon­ey which was paid to the Chi­nese con­trac­tor to con­struct the St Joseph Sec­ondary School.

It al­so seeks to com­pel the two for­eign­ers to dis­close in­for­ma­tion about the First Cit­i­zen’s cheque and whether it had been de­posit­ed with­in 24 hours.

The mat­ter has al­so been re­ferred to the Fraud Squad af­ter a re­port had been made claim­ing that a se­nior em­ploy­ee of the for­eign firm, with the as­sis­tance of oth­er peo­ple, was able to change the com­pa­ny’s records at the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s of­fice and form a new com­pa­ny bear­ing a sim­i­lar name to col­lect the pay­ment from the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance, Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Ltd.

In May 2008, the Chi­nese firm was hired by the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Ltd to con­struct the St Joseph Sec­ondary School and now owes sev­er­al lo­cal sub­con­trac­tors vary­ing sums for work done on the project.

The com­pa­ny claims that with­out ac­cess to the pay­ment there was a re­al risk that it can be­come bank­rupt.