GEORGETOWN, Guyana,
Monday, October 29, 2012 – Executives of Guyana-based chartered airline
EZjet are in damage-control mode as their founder and chief executive
officer Sonny Ramdeo is to be hauled before a Florida court to face
accusations that he siphoned off over US$5 million from his former
employer to keep his airline afloat.
Following Ramdeo’s demission
of office last week to fight the lawsuit levied against him, acting
chief executive officer Rosalinda Rasul has sought to assure passengers
and other customers that the operations of the carrier are not affected
by the scandal.
Rasul said flights will continue as normal and
the airline is still pushing ahead with plans to expand its routes to
include Brazil, Barbados, Fort Lauderdale and St Lucia by next month.
Ramdeo
stepped down as CEO last Wednesday (October 24) and issued a press
release the following day stating that he was doing so “in the interest
of removing all doubt about the viability of EzJet,” adding that: “I am
removing myself from EzJet management, until this embarrassing matter
had been clear up and my good name has been restored.”
According
to court documents, Promise Healthcare and 11 of its hospitals is suing
Ramdeo, PayServ Tax and EzJet GT, in Palm Beach County Court, after
hiring him eight years ago to manage payroll for its 3,500 employees in
its hospitals nationwide.
The healthcare provider accuses "Sonny
Ramdeo, and his companies (of) stealing over five million dollars from
Promise through a sophisticated scheme of fraud and deception.
Specifically, Ramdeo incorporated a company called 'PayServ Tax Inc.'
and deceived Promise's senior management into believing that PayServ was
a legitimate payroll tax processing company affiliated with the
nationally known payroll processing company, Ceridian. Based on this
lie, he deceived Promise into transferring millions of dollars to
PayServ Tax Inc. and diverted over five million dollars of Promise's
money to himself and his companies," the complaint states.
Moreover,
the complaint states that: “Significantly, in the past two months
alone, Ramdeo stole US$5,387,000 from Promise by diverting its funds to
Ez Jet. He did this by diverting money in the PayServ account that had
been deposited for payment of Promise's payroll taxes to his jet charter
company, EZJet GT Inc.”
The hospitals are seeking damages for
fraud, unjust enrichment, conversion, and civil theft and imposition of a
constructive trust. They are represented by Matthew Triggs, with
Proskauer Rose, of Boca Raton.
However, Ramdeo has countered that
this lawsuit is all part of an elaborate cover-up by his former
employers to divert attention and blame away from their own alleged
fraud.
“Since my former bosses are themselves in court over
diversion of over US$550 million dollars of company funds, they elected
to claim ignorance and innocence when it came to coming clean about the
investment. Instead, they alleged that I diverted funds to EZjet, which I
did not,” he said in his press statement last Thursday.
http://www.caribbean360.com
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