Five former TAJ cashiers cleared after nine-year fraud case collapses in court

Five women who spent nearly a decade fighting fraud charges linked to Tax Administration Jamaica (TAJ) were cleared in court yesterday, after a judge dismissed the matter for want of prosecution following close to three dozen adjournments and a stalled trial.

Dermain Shakespeare, Kelly-Ann Wright, Sherine Leslie, Shanna-Kay Simmonds-Johnson and Sherika Stewart — all cashiers at TAJ when they were taken into custody in 2017 — left the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court free of the charges.

Want of prosecution is a legal term applied when a court throws out a case because it has dragged on unreasonably for various reasons.

According to one of the attorneys involved, the women are weighing a lawsuit against the State for compensation, arguing that several of their constitutional rights were breached, including the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time.

Althea Freeman, who represented Wright, said the dismissal was the right call "given the nature and the history of the matter".

"It's only fair that justice is balanced. It must be fair to both the accused person and the victims. It cannot be continuously skewed towards allowing the prosecution to be nonchalant," she told The Gleaner yesterday.

Court records indicate that lawyers from the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) had been handling the prosecution under a fiat issued by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

With no prosecutor present in court yesterday, defence attorneys for the five women applied to have the charges thrown out for want of prosecution, pointing to the nine-year delay. A court clerk instead sought a further adjournment.

The presiding judge refused that request, observing that the women had lived under the weight of the case for nine years and indicating that the prosecution did not appear ready to move forward.

The five were arrested in January 2017 during a raid on TAJ's Cross Roads offices in St Andrew, an operation led by MOCA with support from the Revenue Protection Division and the Financial Investigations Division.

Law-enforcement officials said at the time that the Government had been bilked out of millions of dollars through a fraudulent scheme uncovered at the location.

Within days of the raid, Shakespeare, Wright, Leslie, Simmonds-Johnson and Stewart faced a string of charges, among them conspiracy to defraud, forgery, falsification of records, and larceny as a servant.

Court documents show that more than a dozen adjournments piled up during case management hearings before a trial date was eventually fixed for September 24, 2019. The trial itself, however, only got under way on October 19, 2021 following additional postponements.

The records further note that by February of last year — more than three years after proceedings opened — just one witness had testified, with another 30 adjournments recorded along the way.

Shakespeare was represented by attorneys Christopher Townsend and Chadwick Berry; Leslie by Obika Gordon; Simmonds-Johnson by Kymberli Whittaker; and Stewart by Orville Morgan.