An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny re­vealed that in 2022 it was de­fraud­ed of US$200,000 in a phish­ing in­ci­dent, but that 75 per cent of it was re­cov­ered.

How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny came un­der fire yes­ter­day at the Pub­lic Ac­counts (En­ter­pris­es) Com­mit­tee from its chair­man Wade Mark as to how the mat­ter was han­dled.

Paria chair­man New­man George said in the com­pa­ny’s writ­ten re­sponse to the com­mit­tee in May 2024, that Paria was in­volved in a law­suit in a Flori­da dis­trict court along­side oth­er par­ties af­fect­ed by the fraud and that set­tle­ment dis­cus­sions were on­go­ing.  

“I am pleased to in­form you that Paria has suc­cess­ful­ly re­cov­ered ap­prox­i­mate­ly 75 per cent of the loss­es in­curred from the in­ci­dent, which I con­sid­er com­mend­able, see­ing that it was an in­ter­na­tion­al cy­ber­at­tack and the short du­ra­tion for res­o­lu­tion of this. This in­ci­dent un­der­scored the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of ro­bust cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty prac­tices and the need for on­go­ing vig­i­lance in our op­er­a­tions,” George de­tailed.

Since im­ple­ment­ing ad­di­tion­al con­trols, the chair­man said Paria has not ex­pe­ri­enced any fur­ther cy­ber­at­tacks.  

“As we move for­ward, we re­main com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, and I look for­ward with the as­sis­tance of Paria's man­age­ment to ad­dress­ing any ques­tions or con­cerns you may have re­gard­ing our fi­nan­cial per­for­mances and fu­ture out­look,” he con­clud­ed.

PA(E)C chair­man Wade Mark then asked for clar­i­ty on the 75 per cent that was re­cov­ered and asked if the oth­er 25 per cent would be com­ing back to the tax­pay­ers of this coun­try or if it wold be writen off as a loss.

Re­spond­ing, Paria’s fi­nance lead Daren Lal said the re­cov­ered amount was US$147,000, and the dif­fer­ence would have to be writ­ten off, due to the set­tle­ment.

A puz­zled Mark asked whether the set­tle­ment was with the fraud­sters.

Lal then said when the law­suit was filed by an­oth­er par­ty im­pact­ed by the fraud, Paria was joined in the claim due to its in­volve­ment in the fraud­u­lent trans­ac­tion and the lit­i­ga­tion in­volved in the freez­ing of the ac­count, where the funds were di­vert­ed.  

Mark asked the Paria chair­man if any­one was held ac­count­able for this trans­ac­tion and whether the mat­ter was re­port­ed to the Fraud Squad.

George al­lowed the com­pa­ny’s gen­er­al man­ag­er Mush­taq Mo­hammed to an­swer, “Yes, the in­ci­dent was re­port­ed to the Fraud Squad im­me­di­ate­ly on dis­cov­ery. The Fraud Squad have be­gun their in­ves­ti­ga­tions and not sure they have com­plet­ed all that is re­quired.”