An ac­cused man ap­peared be­fore the San Fer­nan­do Mas­ter’s Court on Mon­day 16, charged with ut­ter­ing a forged doc­u­ment, ob­tain­ing mon­ey by false pre­tences and three counts of mon­ey laun­der­ing.

The charges fol­lowed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau in­to a re­port made in Sep­tem­ber 2022 by the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, a fi­nan­cial au­dit iden­ti­fied dis­crep­an­cies in­volv­ing a cheque pre­pared for a sup­pli­er. In­ves­ti­ga­tors re­port­ed that the cheque was stolen, the pay­ee de­tails were al­tered and the amount was in­creased.