Minister in warning over forged cheque

Minister of Tourism and Aviation Dionisio D'Aguilar. Photo: Terrel W. Carey Sr/Tribune Staff

As of Monday, March 2, 2020

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Cabinet minister has issued a warning to all businesses and individuals with checking accounts after his ministry summoned the Royal Bahamas Police Force (RBPF) to probe an alleged fraud.

Dionisio D’Aguilar, minister of tourism and aviation, told Tribune Business that a forged check bearing the Ministry of Tourism’s name, together with the seemingly correct signatures, was “presented for payment and cleared”.

Revealing that it had been created outside the ministry, Mr D’Aguilar said the police were immediately called to investigate once the transaction was picked up and flagged. He denied that the sum involved was $1.6m, although he declined to reveal the true figure citing the ongoing police investigation.

“I’ll say this. I won’t say much on it,” the minister told this newspaper. “What I will say is a forged cheque was generated outside the Ministry of Tourism and drawn on its account. It was presented for payment and cleared.

“Once the Ministry of Tourism picked up on the fact the cheque had cleared the police were called and the investigation is ongoing.” Mr D’Aguilar said he was “neither going to confirm nor deny” that a former high-ranking government official, who has held multiple posts, and one of their relatives were being questioned by police about the forged cheque. Police were yesterday equally tight-lipped.

Arguing that the situation had wider implications, the minister added: “I would like to caution everyone who operates a business of chequing account of the technology available now. People can make wonderful copies of your cheques and, once they have your signature transposed, that is a forged cheque and that’s a real concern.

“You may want to switch to wire transfers for payment and moving monies between accounts, but you then have to be vigilant for e-mails asking about your bank account details. There is a constant attack on bank accounts to illegally gain funds, and wherever they feel there are accounts that have a lot of activity, those are high risk.”

Well_mudda_take_sic 4 years, 2 months ago

Why doesn't this marsh mallow haired twit have the Ministry of Tourism seek legal recourse against the bank if he's absolutely certain the cheque was forged? Is it because similar cheques issued by his ministry and cleared by the bank do not bear original signatures but rather facsimile or electronically reproduced signatures even in the case of cheques issued for very large amounts?

If the cheque in question had been physically signed but the Ministry of Tourism had failed to provide the bank with a listing and samples of the signatures of its authorised signatories, then that's an entirely different matter - one of gross incomptence that we have come to expect of our government.

And just think how many more large fraudulent cheques have cleared the bank that our marsh mallow headed minister of tourism has not been able to identify because basic bank reconciliations have not been properly or timely done within his ministry. D'Aguilar will never give us full details of what 'his' internal or the police investigations reveal, nor will he call on the Office of the Auditor-General to perform a special audit. Instead D'Aguilar is gonna do what all cabinet ministers in the corrupt Minnis-led FNM government do with their dirty little secrets that they don't want aired in public - sweep it all under the rug and hope the public forgets about it. So much for Minnis's promise to be the most transparent government the Bahamian people have ever had!

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