There’s an ongoing battle for ownership of the mega-million dollar newspaper, Newsday. The company launched by Daniel Chookolingo in 1993, is getting no media publicity because two years after its launch, the daily immediately became the fastest selling newspaper in Trinidad and Tobago outstripping the then 30-year old Trinidad Express and the mighty Guardian which was then over 75 years old. Both newspaper and their vast billion dollar media outfits have remained silent since the case was filed in the High Court in 2014.While Newsday’s up-to-date value remains shrouded, there was a valuation done a decade ago which put its worth at over $200 million dollars. Sources close to Mr Chookolingo says this is a bogus value which was given by the Steve Castagne controlled board to buy out minority shareholders to gain full control of his company.
BREAKING STORY
More Castagne Related Corruption Discovered
With The Help Of Pegasus,Criminals and Dawn Ford
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Pegasus and Sheriff now so powerful that any scam can play
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Sheriff's unfettered access to all smartphones is reason for a C.O.E.
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Massive Fraud uncovered with the sale of assets to Castagne
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After 14 Years Without a Report, The BIR Never Charged Anyone
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Mrs Dawn Ford / Board Face Stiff Jail time
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Allegations That Case Will Be Buried By High Officials
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Most Daring Criminal Acts Seen Since The O’Halloran Years
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Dawn Ford Latest Schemer
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Whistle Blower asks Police for Protection
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One Percent Boasts they can stop the BIR from investigating Ford
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BIR Allows Ford to Travel In and Out of T&T
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Ford Boasts she has a "Get Out of Jail Free Card"
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Full List of Offenders and Accomplices to be Provided
TTJF has learnt that a report has been made to the DPP, the Police, the Attorney General and the Board of Inland Revenue (BIR) regarding massive fraud and corruption by Dawn Ford. Mrs Ford has run the Chookolingo newspaper business, Choko Holdings Ltd (CHL), for over a decade since the death of the company’s former chairman, Wayne Chookolingo, in 2010. In November 2022, she signed a deal with the notorious Steve Castagne to sell the Company’s main assets, the 40% shares in Newsday, estimated to be worth well over one hundred million dollars ($100,000,000.00), for eight million ($8,000,000) dollars, a crooked deal that has pissed off many shareholders. The last known valuation for the 40% Newsday shares was eighty-two million dollars ($82,000,000.) which was based on financials in 2008, over 14 years ago. Newsday declared multi-million dollar profits every year since then but only distributed approximately 50 % of those profits. Therefore, the value for those Newsday shares increased exponentially in value by several million dollars each year for the past 14 years.
To compound her illegal activities, Mrs Ford never presented any financials for CHL since she has been in office, some 12 years without the BIR raising an issue. She made a fool of shareholders by presenting an assortment of grandiose statements about how she was a great manager and presented a personal statement about how she ‘fixed’ the company….but never produced a financials to support anything….she was a queen bull shitter. Most of the company’s shareholders were too busy with their lives to notice the bullshit she was spewing. After ten years of drawing millions of dollars and paying off some shareholders for their blind support, she told them in 2021, that the company could not pay dividends and the business is losing money so it is best to sell for $8 million … while they can. No mention was made of the inherent value of the company which, most assuredly, moved from $82 million in 2008 to an untold figure in 2021. During those intervening years, Newsday is thought to have made heavy investments in a radio frequency and other investments. She pulled the perfect con on CHL’s shareholders, most of who are family members, by lionising their father, the late Patrick ‘Choko’ Chookolingo, who she despised all her life but found out she could fake her way into getting their support by saying he was the greatest. Choko was angry when she married Ashton Ford, whom he correctly described as a leech as history has shown.
Some oppressed shareholders claim that everything points to a pay-off of some key minority shareholders to go along with her illegal scheme, while she was also able to get the support of staff shareholders, some of who are related to her husband, Ashton Ford, former PNM general secretary.
Year after year, Ford’s vacuous and disgusting shareholder clique would come to meetings and congratulate Ford for running a model company and denigrate anyone who dared to ask questions, it was like a political mob against all who didn’t support Ford. One of the mindless directors, Ms Sinanan stated boldly that the company was doing so well that we should sell now. No one ever saw a financial from the company since they actually did not exist. That did not stop Ford from making fraudulent statements to shareholders about its non-existent success. As it turned out, the Mirror and Punch newspapers were later shut down after she gave it to PNM MP, Mr Maxie Cuffie for a year on a ‘trial run’ despite objections from Kifayat Mohammed, the former manager of the company. She then turned on Mohammed too. Cuffie used up all the company’s newsprint, collected the hundreds of thousands in advertising outstanding (receivables) and returned the shell of the company without paying his rental fees, but minus the assets he misappropriated. It was a disgusting time in the history of the company as it was run like a loss making Government Company. Questions about her secret deal with Cuffie were never answered. Yet, she patted herself on the back. When her brother Glenn complained about the sale price at the AGM in 2013, he was criticized for his ‘foolish enquiries’. Anyone who criticized her was demonised since all Ford’s people were primed to accept peanuts for the assets. The others, who felt they were being cheated, were said to be greedy, misinformed and ignorant.
In the same year, 2013, at an AGM, Board members Cindi Da Costa and Joyce Sinanan, told the shareholders that the company was doing so well that we ought to sell before the company went down and there was no need to produce financials which became more problematic with each passing year, since an audit would only expose her sordid corruption. This went on for 12 years until 2021. Meanwhile, Newsday founder, Daniel Chookolingo, had the Newsday directors in Court for the many unsavoury and highly illegal manoeuvres that culminated in some highly unconstitutional acts performed by CJ Ivor Archie. That complaint against the CJ is currently before the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic. It is unsure what the PM will do next but it’s a hard pill for him to swallow since he is on record as backing CJ Archie in a previous attempt to sanction his suspected behaviour. Mr Chookolingo states he has no desire to remove the CJ Archie, merely to have his case that the CJ refused to entertain, and merely to have a fair hearing and a proper discussion on the CJ’s behaviour in this matter. People close to Chookolingo state that he did not know his then attorney was so close to the CJ, and obviously succumbed to the CJ. Mr Raj Joseph, who has since been appointed Ombudsman, has been reported to the Disciplinary Committee for unlawfully appearing in the Chookolingo matter since he was debarred form making court appearances after his stint as a senior EOT judge. So Chookolingos’ ownership is still alive and well but Castagne essentially thought, with the CJ’s ruling in the Court of Appeal, his ownership of Newsday was sealed and delivered by the CJ Archie intervention.
Chookolingo was advised that the legal case against the CJ is properly referred to as ‘descending into the arena’ and abandoning his role as an impartial judge, amongst other illegalities.
Back to the Ford shenanigans, one shareholder said it must be true that Ford sat on the Newsday board as window dressing and to legitimise the rip-off as he was told, while massive fraudulent contracts were being dished out for private car rental, insurance and communications contracts etc, which was the real reason CHL shareholders did not get any dividends in 2020.
Meanwhile, Ford’s most devious move was to fire the company’s secretary, Mymoona Khan, who was the only employee who could see that you can’t run a company without financials, but yet Ford congratulated herself by telling the shareholders how brilliant she was. Ms Khan was the person in charge of the staff shareholding group, so it was vital to get rid of her to commit her grand fraud. The company shareholders were told Ms Khan was corrupt and opened the company safe and took all the money and other valuables inside, she couldn’t say what money or what valuables, plus an assortment of other activities. No one questioned her since people gobble up corruption charges very easily. But, Ford was keen on telling all and sundry what went wrong before she arrived on the scene in 2011, putting the proverbial blame on everyone else even though the company was a mega million dollar company before her arrival, whilst she never made a dollar or produced one financial to cover up her fraud. The entire company knows that, but she pays her sycophant followers just enough for the next meal, they can’t see farther than that. Many of the other shareholders are now extremely pissed off at the duplicity and criminal actions of Dawn Ford which are now coming to light.
Dawn Ford-several complaints filed against her
But it was Mymoona who took care of all the shareholders concerns as corporate secretary before she was fired and she sued for unfair dismissal and won $200,000.00, which Ford tried in vain to hide from the company shareholders. Despite the court award, Ford flatly refused to pay telling shareholders in a meeting that any payment to Mymoona will be deducted from dividends. All members kept quiet. When the court case against the company fell apart, essentially clearing Mymoona from any wrong doing, she gave her usual crooked spin. But Mymoona probably singularly saved the company from failure since her previous boss, Wayne Chookolingo, was at sea. Dawn Ford, however, while she was also at sea, hers was quite a different story since her singular mission was to steal the assets and pauperise her family for personal gain. She lied about the fortunes of the company at every turn until it became nauseating for all but those whose hands she was greasing, and greasing well from the looks of it. The stakes were very high, over $100,000,000. was easily estimated to be stolen. One shareholder, Neil, believes it to be at least $250,000,000. million. Naturally, he is very upset. He may very well be short of the mark.
Ford’s first attempt to sell the Newsday shares and all assets was when she sent out a resolution to sell the assets for $8 million dollars, she knew that her support base lived out of the country and they would gobble up any story she was selling.
Except that a couple of shareholders in T&T figured out the rip-off and challenged her to show what was being sold. Naturally, she couldn’t say and backed down in the face of exposure, failure and a jail term. Some say she didn’t want to be the first family member to go to jail. She then put up those sycophant overseas shareholders to attack the other shareholders for being stumbling blocks. Her activities sound like the typical political story line that depends on zealous sycophants. So, she had all the shareholders fighting among themselves while she could not even produce a single financial for her 12 year illegal stint. Then, like a thief in the night, last November, she did another resolution telling shareholders she was selling for the ‘best’ price, $8 million dollars. When one of the overseas shareholders discovered it was the same story from 2013 and asked questions, she blocked that shareholder from attending meetings, demanding that she send a notarised proxy for the first time in 38 years of the company’s existence. But she nevertheless invited ‘observers’ from Newsday to supervise the sham sale, a breach of protocol. She knew if the proxy was present, that would shed some light on the big steal and she would be reported to the various authorities, and most likely spend some time in jail. Word from one of the shareholders is that a buyer of the Newsday shares, claims he will do whatever he can to see she didn’t get charged by the authorities. He is said to have arranged a residency card for Ford and her husband to live in Canada just in case.
While the loose grouping of CHL shareholders who all want justice by the DPP, the BIR and other authorities. So far there has only been an acknowledgment of the information sent by the authorities even though they were provided with many incriminating documents. The BIR, who did not get a ‘return’ for past 14 years from CHL, never seemed to be interested, which in itself is the most amazing thing accountants we spoke to ever heard of since there are fees in the tens of thousands every year which are compounded. This is easy money for the Board. The Directors are charged the fees if the company is unable to pay them. One accountant told TTJF that there must be big people in the country who are protecting Mrs Ford. But, since all several complaints were filed, no real action has commenced ….which is stranger than fiction as they say. This is especially so since the BIR has been alerted and have all the facts to charge the Directors. It’s really easy money for the BIR.
One shareholder stated “Dawn didn’t have two cents to rub together’ before she ran CHL. But, one person in Ford’s camp has said that she will simply disappear in the Canadian landscape, like Lawrence Duprey did. They say that she has been assured that she will be the first to know if or when charges are prepared so she will have a head start to jump on a jet. Was that a slip of the tongue or an admission that they all know what she is up to? Ms Khan seems to be having the last laugh at her former co-workers who all abandoned her during the nasty allegations and before her name was cleared by the court even though she never got her $200,000. awarded to her.
Meanwhile, Mrs Ford and her leeching husband are laughing all the way to the Canadian bank. It is worth noted that this is the same Castagne that was a key adviser and friend to Lawrence Duprey, and stood-in for him at Home Construction Ltd board meetings which also saw him purchase 7 high priced One Woodbrook Place apartments on the cheap. It was speculated in the daily press, not Newsday, that Duprey left the country while a high level Commission of Enquiry (COE) was in progress. The COE found multiple breaches and failures by Duprey. Disgruntled CHL shareholders see a similar set of events at play here.
CHL shareholders learnt that Mrs Ford now owns expensive properties and vehicles in T&T and Canada which are in her children’s names and pauperised many of her siblings in the process. Some of them have died while waiting for some transparency from the Ford crooks.
The CHL whistle blower has requested police protection because of the brazenness of the crimes and the kind of venom she and her sycophant supporters are accustomed to. Right now Ford is just trying to cover up her 14 years of crime.
