A Freeport busi­ness­woman has been grant­ed bail with sure­ty in the sum of $750,000, when she ap­peared be­fore a Mas­ter of the High Court yes­ter­day, charged with ex­tor­tion and rob­bery of­fences.

Sab­ri­na Kalleechar­ran, was charged with five counts of de­mand­ing mon­ey with men­aces and one count of rob­bery, when she ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Am­brose Per­sad-Singh, at the Ch­agua­nas Mas­ters’ Court, on Jan­u­ary 22.

Kalleechar­ran was not called up­on to plead and was grant­ed bail.

The woman must re­port to a Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Po­lice Sta­tion three days a week be­tween 6 am and 6 pm, have no con­tact with the vir­tu­al com­plainants di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, re­side at her ad­dress un­til the com­ple­tion of the mat­ter and ob­serve a cur­few be­tween the hours of 6 pm and 6:15 am, every day.

The Suf­fi­cien­cy Hear­ing date was set for Sep­tem­ber 23.

The ar­rest and charges stem from re­ports made by sev­er­al mem­bers of the Freeport busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, that "they were be­ing ex­tort­ed and the al­leged tar­gets of vile and vi­o­lent threats from the per­pe­tra­tors."

All re­ports were made via the An­ti-Ex­tor­tion Unit (AEU) Hot­line num­ber, which was shared with mem­bers of the pub­lic in 2024.

As a re­sult of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions, a sig­nif­i­cant ex­tor­tion ring op­er­at­ing with­in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty was un­cov­ered.

The TTPS' re­port added "that a fe­male busi­ness own­er of the area had co­or­di­nat­ed with a high-risk in­mate of the Port-of-Spain prison, to sup­ply per­son­al de­tails about the vic­tims be­ing ex­tort­ed"

One sus­pect was ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with the mat­ter and sub­se­quent­ly charged with the of­fences, by Cpl Philip and PCs Malchan and Be­dasee.

The AEU says it re­mains res­olute in its pur­suit of per­sons who are in­tent on ex­tort­ing per­sons or sup­port­ing in­di­vid­u­als who car­ry out such acts. Mem­bers of the pub­lic are urged to con­tin­ue us­ing the Hot­line Num­ber – 797-3150.