Magistrates Courts’ clerk accused of forging BoG cheques
Salona Wills, an accounts clerk attached to the Diamond/Golden Grove Magistrates’ Courts, who has been slapped with three fraud charges, has pleaded not guilty to any.
File photo: Salona Wills being escorted by a Police rank at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Courts in March 2022
The 32-year-old resident of Lot 312 Republic Park, East Bank Demerara has been granted bail in the sum of $100,000 by acting Chief Magistrate Sherdel Isaacs-Marcus, before whom she appeared on Friday at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Courts.
It is alleged that between May 12 and May 16, at Georgetown, she intended to defraud persons unknown to her by tendering three forged Bank of Guyana (BoG) cheques, totalling $2,948,000.
Wills, a single mother of two, was granted bail on the condition that she reports to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) Headquarters every Friday at 09:00hrs. She has also been ordered by the court to not leave the jurisdiction.
Her matter has been adjourned until June 13.
In March last year, Wills was charged with embezzling over $3 million in National Insurance Scheme (NIS) and Pay As You Earn (PAYE) payments from Leibrands Financial Management and Tax Consultancy, where she had been employed as a supervisor. She was granted $200,000 bail after denying the six charges.
The particulars of the charges alleged that between August 1 and December 20, 2021, at Durban Street, Georgetown, while being a clerk or servant of Leibrands Financial Management and Tax Consultancy, she fraudulently embezzled $3,134,290 in cash received or taken into possession by her for, or on account of, her employer.
The Police Prosecutor had related that, besides receiving funds from clients on behalf of the company, Wills was also tasked with ensuring that clients pay their employees’ National Insurance Scheme (NIS) and Pay As You Earn (PAYE) deductions.
In the periods mentioned in the charges, the company’s clients had handed over sums of money to Wills to pay their employees’ NIS and PAYE. The woman, however, allegedly stole those sums of money.
This publication is unaware of the legal status of the latter six charges. (G1)
