Syed used salary advance to pay lover’s student loan

(CNS): The former UCCI president, Hassan Syed, admitted using more than $60,000 of the salary advance he got before he resigned from the college to pay off his former girlfriend’s student loan. Syed told the court that he had received approval for the CI$71,472 salary advance from Connor O’Dea, the chair of the university’s board of governors, following a meeting in which he had told him he was ill. The court heard that Syed had then told the accountant that he needed the money quickly because he needed medical treatment urgently. But he admitted that as soon as he received the cash in January 2008, he used most of it for something else.

The salary advance is one of a dozen dishonesty offences faced by Syed, who is accused of stealing around $500,000 from the UCCI during his 20-month term as president. He has denied all the charges. The crown claim that he got the six-month salary advance by deceiving the college accountant with false documents purporting to show the board chair had approved it.

When he was questioned, Syed denied the allegations and said O’Dea verbally approved it at a short meeting at his office. He said that once the salary advance was given to him, it was his to do as he saw fit because it was going to be paid back. At first, he said he could not remember what he used the money for but when he was shown a statement from his former lover, he accepted that he had used the money to help pay off her education debts.

Asked about how he secured the cash advance, Syed denied falsifying emails and other documents to fool the college accountant into giving him the money. He said he could not remember the details of when things happened. He said he remembered the meeting with O’Dea when he had agreed to the salary advance for the medical treatment but he said he could not remember the timelines or when it was that O’Dea signed the document which formally approved the advance and the pay back arrangements.

Evidence given to the court by the board chair was that he had never approved the salary advance verbally or otherwise. O’Dea had told the court that when he learned of it several months later, he had asked Syed to sign a document agreeing terms of repayment. But the former president left the island soon after.

In another full day of cross-examination Syed struggled to recall or remember many events and was largely unable to answer the questions from Patrick Moran, the deputy director of public prosecutions. On many occasions he told the crown’s lawyer that he was asking him to speculate as he did not recollect dates or details.

In addition to claiming that in a face-to-face meeting the chairman had approved his salary advance, he said that the former chief officer of the civil service, Peter Gough, had approved the falsification of $150,000 worth of invoices for Lominger, the US company which was supplying the speciality education products for the Civil Service College.

Syed told the jury that the civil service boss had agreed that, because the budget was limited, the only way that UCCI could be reimbursed for the money it was investing in the physical development of the college, such as the furniture and computers, was to charge it for the service elements of the project.

He gave few details about the alleged conversation with Gough, who he claimed agreed to the falsification of the documents to ensure the UCCI did not have to bear the costs,a nd Syed again struggled to remember the chain of events and how the money was paid.

Facing more questions about his PhD, the crown asked Syed why there was no mention on his original application form when he was first employed by the college that he was still working on it, as there was a question about what qualifications applicants may still be pursuing. Syed, who told the court Wednesday that he acquired his doctorate in Pakistan, said that the doctorate was in a classified subject so he did not talk about it.

The case continues.