New Expose of the Dawn Ford $100 million Dollar Rip Off of the Family Owned Media Company Causes Her to Threaten Legal Action

One Shareholder Threatening Her Own Court Action to Retrieve Her $7 million Plus
Ford Unable to Provide Crucial Statutory Documents and Transparency About Her Tenure
Assets Sold for a Ridiculous $8 million
Endless list of Irregularities Discovered without Answers

Dawn Ford Steve Castagne

Protagonist # 1 Protagonist # 2

Below is a full copy of a recent letter received by TTJUSTICEFOUNDATION that was sent to Dawn Ford

1st August 2022

Dawn Ford,

Choko Holdings Ltd.

Mrs Ford,

I refer to your letter dated 25th July 2022 sent on behalf of your attorney Mr Coppin. It confuses me why you chose to send a legal letter, instead of providing the year-long set of documents required by Ms Sutton. Mr Coppin’s letter contains a number of empty threats which at best can only gag Ms Sutton pending a full hearing of a libel case, nothing more. This is a common ploy used by the guilty, especially one where the guilty party (or parties) has all their ill-gotten resources at their disposal, and when exposed decide to play holier than thou. I can't imagine anyone believing your plea of innocence made by Mr Coppin. The evidence of the massive fraud has been made clear and available to all shareholders in a very legal and transparent way as required by law.

Your time would have been better spent responding to Ms Sutton's requests for full company details over the past year and by others shareholders before her.

Nonetheless, I respond to Mr Coppin’s letter as follows.

I don’t know why Mr Coppin is repeating ad nauseam a few limited section of the Companies Act when it was made clear that the sections which are largely pertinent and deal with the following items have not been addressed at all, are:

Section dealing with the winding up of the company and the false labelling of winding up proceeds as ‘dividends’. Mr Coppin falsely denied in September 2021 that no such winding up was being contemplated when you are on record as pursuing those objectives.
Sections dealing with the timely production of annual financials which were continually deferred year after year at AGMs and remain so as recent as at the AGM in 2022, including financials for the fully-owned subsidiary MPGL (Mirror) which have disappeared from existence all together.
A copy of all documents and agendas sent to shareholders not just AGM minutes.
Section 144 of the Act.
A proper detailed list of the assets being sold or already sold and promised to me at the last AGM earlier this year.
Full transparency of the sales as described by the act.
Full details of the assets leased to Mr Cuffie which involve the stated disappearance of huge assets which you have previously refused to provide and which do not form part of the financial records for reasons best known to you – not disclosed.
The fraudulent filing of false share ownership documents with your full knowledge that they were false.
Sections 99, which deals with full disclosure and acting in good faith as directors.
Deliberately withholding information and dishonesty under Section 240.
Oppression as broadly defined by Section 242.
Proof that all the required monthly, quarterly and annual filing to various State agencies were complied with… as you seemingly suggested they were. The non-production of annual financials would indicate otherwise.
Clarification about your (yes, you, Mrs Ford) ongoing dishonest statements of having turned around the company (MPGL) while in reality, and quite conversely, sucking the life-blood of shareholders' dividends over a period of roughly 10 years.

The breaches of the above clearly show fraud and malfeasance in a grand way and constitute grave offences on your part.

In addition, the very few documents that were supplied were not done in the prescribed manner, so I am at a loss as to why Mr Coppin states that documents have been ‘fully complied with the provisions of the Act.’ Repeatedly lying and having your attorney lie on your behalf does not turn lies to truths. Whether you are trying to convince Ms Sutton or yourself that lies are truths, only you know. Either way this does not help the unpalatable situation you and the other directors find yourselves in by dint of your dogged deceit and determination to serve yourselves rather than the company and its shareholders.

None of the documents required, specifically the financials, are available publicly. These documents are also mandated to be supplied to shareholders annually at each AGM where the company’s auditor should, by rights, be present to answer any questions shareholders may have – as was done up to 2010. Even at the most recent 2022 AGM which I attended, annual financials were not presented, nor was the auditor present to answer questions. Then, suddenly, Ms Sutton and I recently received the financials in a most clandestine manner by email. The absence of financials has happened for all (or most) of the years from 2011 to the present. The point being: financial reports have never been presented to discuss at AGMs which is the crux of the having AGMs. Why is this, Mrs Ford? Does that sound normal or legal to you?

Besides the laws broken, this is indicative of a serious problem of transparency and accountability. Was so much illegality happening that you refused to let shareholders see the reports and ask questions at these AGMs? Your actions sent the company spiralling into a dark void to its death, and now Mr Coppin says you are lily-white and have been personally attacked? Your fate for the company was calculated from the start – downright corruption unheard of in the T&T corporate world before now.

Mr Coppin’s ongoing request for me to further clarify what I need from CHL is another well-known tag team ploy that is consistently used by attorneys as a means to frustrate people. For the record, the CHL documents requested were not supplied. I have said before that the documents are to be delivered by hard copy, with a preview/list of said documents to be provided beforehand. This will help me decide if the documents are what Ms Sutton has requested for over a year and not some diversion which I have witnessed time and again. Despite my said request, I received some emails which I am not prepared to waste my time looking at, given they do not meet the above criteria – if I am to go by the labels on the emails which show they are not what were requested. Mr Coppin’s statement that he provided ‘documents in relation to Mirror Group Publications Ltd’ (MGPL) is patently false. Especially since the emailed documents he refers to show that the accounts are ‘unconsolidated’ financials reports from 2011, the year you took control, and is a major accounting departure from all the previous audited accounts which were consolidated accounts. With unconsolidated accounts, no specific information is available for MGPL for the years 2011 to 2018/2019, after which the Mirror and Punch newspapers were closed. Therefore, all the nagging questions that have been asked, especially the Cuffie mishap (or corruption), are unavailable by your design. So, for 2011 to 2018/19, all that can be seen is a figure transferred from the MGPL accounts (not supplied) to the CHL accounts with no indication of how much revenue MGPL received or how much was expended, or how much Mr Cuffie alleged siphoned away, or indeed the directors siphoned. The very purpose for producing financials was defeated. In effect, MGPL was like a well-financed slush fund for you to do with as you pleased, given that's what happened. Isn’t that correct?

Instead of providing the MPGL financials, Mr Coppin refers me to the unnamed liquidator who is not authorised to give me information without a letter from CHL authorising same. Is Mr Coppin for real, asking me to contact thin air, or is this more tag team operations? By my count, the tag team comprises (i) Dawn Ford, (ii) the attorney, (iii) the unknown auditor, (iv) the nameless liquidator, and (v) CHL's other directors. Am I missing anyone? Yes, I think a few shareholders are active members of the tag team, as was obvious when you prompted them to lie and say that Ms Rampaul (Newsday's Corporate Secretary) was not at a CHL meeting when the sale of the DNL shares was agreed upon – but I, the bona fide proxy for Ms Sutton, was kicked out of said meeting. Breach after breach of the laws! And Mr Coppin calls that a personal attack!

Is it reprehensible that shareholders present at these meetings either kept silent when laws were being broken or participated in breaking them? And what of those who, down the years, designated a proxy without contemplating their proxy's character and ethos? From the day you became chairman of CHL, every single action you undertook in that capacity showed your ethos was to serve, slavishly, your PNM friends who were desperate to get their hands on CHL's entire operations especially the DNL shares. To your frustration, it took you over a decade to get there, but deliver them those shares you did. That conspicuous ethos of allegiance to your pals and your single-minded devotion to manipulating and deceiving CHL shareholders however you needed to in order to oblige these pals, points to your character.

Any shareholder can be forgiven for having elected Mrs Ford chairman of CHL in 2010, for want of capable candidates, but to go on supporting you year after year, as some of them have, despite the evidence of your countless criminal actions, shows an astonishing level of ignorance and/or complicity. These supporters must ask themselves to what extent they enabled the perpetrators of these corporate crimes.

A note to CHL's other two directors Ms Da Costa and Ms Sinanan: You will both have to answer for your parts in this debacle. It would seem you have two options in defending yourselves – both equally futile so far as protesting innocence goes. You could claim you were unaware crimes were being committed, but crying ignorance would point to your incompetence as a director and is not a defence in law. Alternatively, you could claim you were simply doing as you were told. Well, company directors exist to ensure a company is run legally and for the benefit of all its shareholders; as such, it is on them to speak up (and inform shareholders if necessary) in each instance that the chairman decides unilaterally on an illegal and/or unethical course of action for the company. Your failure to do these things time and again and/or your willing participation in the infractions committed make you both criminally negligent in your duties to the State and the shareholders

Mr Coppin’s other elementary question as to why reference is made of Section 227. This question was not to deal with the abortive fraudulent sale of the assets in 2013, but to show that his client, you Mrs Ford, was made aware of the law in such detail that you were moved to put on record that a fair value of sale of assets is payable to owners of these assets, not what you and/or the board thinks is fair. That was the law in 2013 and is still the law today. Such a redundant question does not befit a supposedly highly regarded attorney and former government senator as Mr Coppin. More games of pretending ignorance? Shouldn't the real question be why I keep raising the Notice of Special General Meeting of the same date, 23rd July 2013, which clearly shows the complete and total sale of CHL assets (including the DNL shares) being sold where there had been no valuation of the CHL assets at all by you; this is also now contained in an official letter to the Estate of Francis Chookolingo specifically stating quite clearly that there is no valuation of the CHL assets, but the Coppin letter states they are worth $300,000. That is not up for dispute!

Despite your refusal to do a valuation, the DNL shares (not the complete CHL assets) were valued by employing a simple calculation based on a previous value you gave those shares of $82 million in 2009, plus added millions in retained profits for more than 10 or 12 years, which easily put the value of the CHL's shares in DNL at well over $100 million dollars. When you sough to sell these DNL assets for $100 million (your value) you were eager to tell CHL shareholders that the audited value was $82 million. I remember quite clearly that you were not yet on the DNL board when you disclosed this information. This begs the question: where did you get that information from since you also “confessed” that you had never met Mr Castagne. So, is Mr Castagne the sixth member of the tag team? This web of lies is destined to keep on entangling you and your accomplices.

Mr Coppin’s remarks that statements in Ms Sutton's emails amount ‘to personal, discourteous attacks on Mrs Ford and have no evidential or legal basis … and is frivolous and vexatious’ etc, is a sick joke. Simply put, Ms Sutton calling you a crook is not a personal attack when you refuse to obey the laws and give her an account for disposal of her assets as mentioned and requested so many times before. This is a matter of fact. You have been shown (by me) in a recent letter, to be lying on oath (perjury) in additions to all your other offences, yet Mr Coppin seeks to exonerate you by stating you are entitled to natural justice, meaning a right to be confronted and respond to accusations. This has definitely been done and you ought to have taken action to show you have not broken any laws and produce the necessary proof. I never expected you of all people to take that position given how many people you have trampled on and maligned behind their backs in the name of robbery.

But, this is not the first time that Mr Coppin has written to Ms Sutton warning her about slandering you. Are these not empty warnings? Why are you not going after Ms Sutton in court instead of paying Mr Coppin more exorbitant CHL fees to write letters full of hot air? You have made repeated requests to Ms Sutton (personally and through your attorney) to stop slandering you. Would an innocent person keep on making such a request, or would they simply seek a legal resolution? Isn't your failure to do this because you know the mountain of evidence of the crimes you and your co-conspirators have committed is on Ms Sutton's side, and making this a legal matter would serve only to open a monster can of worms that would prove catastrophic for you? Far from slandering you, Ms Sutton is and has been stating the bald facts of your crimes, of which a mountain of evidence, I again remind you, exists to substantiate.

If you do decide to go to court to invalidate (true) claims of offences committed, good luck with that! Will you be using CHL funds to pursue that?

I can only assume the reason you have not permanently migrate to Canada is because you remain in control of the CHL, DNL and MGPL documents that can send you and the entire board to jail … and you wish to keep it that way.

Notwithstanding, Mr Coppin’s letter shows a lack of understanding of what is libel and what is a discussion about factual events. I was under the impression that the basic laws of libel and natural justice were well known to all directors of any media business and to all attorneys.

Finally, Mr Coppin refers to reports made to the authorities and states we should wait for the outcome for those. As far as those reports are concerned, furnishing the missing information Ms Sutton has been asking for will help push the process along involving the authorities. Indeed, the provision of documents may even help by having the company’s name cleared with respect to those limited areas of complaints being investigated by them.

Sadly, Mrs Ford, it is obvious that the people who suffered similar fates to Ms Sutton, with the unexplained loss of their assets caused by you and the board, are those who placed their complete faith in your non-existent honesty and integrity, which I suspect may include shareholders Lisa and Ava, since they are never there to witness your behaviour and don’t seem to be interested. The minimum that Ms Sutton is entitled to is the same courtesies that you extended to all other shareholders to entice them to sell. I don’t believe any of them was foolish enough to part with their $100 plus million dollars in assets for $360,000 each, therefore I must be missing something important. I have heard that many shareholders received ‘extra’ monies to vote to sell the assets.

It is your sworn and solemn duty as a director according to law that to practise no favouritism of any kind where one shareholder is treated better or worse than others. If you or any director knows of such situations they are obligated by law to say so. Shareholder Paris indicated he received 'extra' monies, but sadly he is no longer around to confirm this so we leave that there. Yet, if that is true, why stop at paying Paris? Talk is rife that there are many more such shareholders. This is what happens when you conduct shareholders' business in the illegal and clandestine manner you have done and are doing. I feel it my duty to embark on a campaign to sensitise shareholders and encourage them to disclose any illegal payments they received with full knowledge that such payment cannot be held against them. The sale of almost all the assets of CHL can now be called blood money given how many have suffered because of you. One final observation I must add: It seems the people you have surrounded yourself with are mostly enemies of the State – and of Pop and what he stood for. Now it's all gone thanks to massive thievery.

In my view, Mr Coppin’s legal letter was written with the intention of being sent to CHL shareholders in hopes of convincing them that all Ms Sutton claims are false. These shareholders ought to know that when someone accuses you of lying on oath, that that is a criminal offence and you can send the accuser to jail. This is one way you can proceed against me personally. And so, it will be my pleasure to send a copy of Mr Coppin’s letter and my reply on Mr Sutton's behalf to shareholders so as to save you the time and effort. No need to thank me! My words to them is that the law provides all shareholders a way to get back their value for money, which was the very same Section 227 quoted by you in 2013, the same one you don’t remember.

My alternate view is that Mr Coppin’s letter is a prelude to you resigning and exiting the country where you are beyond the reach of the authorities.

Incidentally, Ms Sutton has informed me she was/is unavailable to read Mr Coppin's email, though I have discussed it with her. I gather she emailed Mr Coppin some time ago advising him why she was no longer disposed to reading correspondence from him on behalf of CHL as those she had read were chockfull of dishonest claims along with fabricated laws and information. In other words, they were "rubbish" and a waste of her precious time.

Faithfully,

Daniel Chookolingo

POE for Francesca Sutton

cc: Cindi Da Costa, Director of CHL

Joyce Sinanan, Director of CHL

Shareholders of CHL

Attached: Letter from Mr Coppin dated 25th July 22

First Published 1 August, 2022

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