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.
MASS CONSPIRACY UNCOVERED
BC, Aboud, The One Percent And Their Respective Consciences
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The Elite Are a Law Unto Themselves
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Mass Conspiracy Exposed Involving Auditors, Attorneys and at Least 2 Members of the Bench
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Share Owners Were Forced and Conned Into Selling Their Newsday Shares Losing ¼ billion Dollars in The Process
Intro:
TTJF is pleased to add a new chapter in the ongoing saga with the One percent and how they control the mass media. Below is the latest article by Daniel Chookolingo, Newsday’s founder, who insists the press in T&T will not publish this letter which was sent to them on 29th October 2023.
TTJF
BC, Aboud, The One Percent And Their Respective Consciences.
A reflection by Daniel Chookolingo, Founder of Newsday
It was with great sorrow on Sunday that I found out that we lost a son of the soil, a man admired by many.
BC Pires, on a different plane of existence
James Aboud went down different road to BC
Steve Castagne who BC tried to distance himself from
Suzanne Mills exposed corruption at Newsday
I was reminded that BC Pires was bright and fashioned his public persona very much like Patrick Chookolingo AKA Choko who pioneered the weekly newspapers which thrived on literary innovation and wittiness but at the same time protecting and serving the man-in-the-street as some of his core values. Choko’s motto was if it’s fit to print and can be substantiated, it did not matter who it offended. He often said to me that once a story is true then there was a certain amount of latitude to make ‘fair comment.’ His dedication to duty led to his premature death at the same age as BC.
BC was said to be a fan of Choko’s journalistic style. Indeed, his weekly column Thank God it’s Friday was a sort of imitation of Choko who coined the slogan Your week Begins On Friday when the entire country waited with bated breath to hear the latest inside scoop on what was really happening in the country via the pages of the Bomb.
Its circulation crossed 80,000 copies weekly, a remarkable feat that was never again repeated to the envy of the then two dailies whose mission was to double check every article to find the smallest error…instead of fixing their own shortcomings and ‘bussing the next mark.’
The main difference was that Choko did it for service and BC supposedly did it because he wanted to apologise for being born into a family that made huge amounts of ‘blood’ money according to a former editor-in-chief at the Mirror who was always angry with BC’s father, Joe Pires, for making several fortunes from selling chemicals to Caroni while the cane workers suffered from a lack of basic treatment for simple ailments. Ironically, this former editor, still alive but suffering from degenerative disease, later became very close friends with many of the One Percent.
On Sunday 22nd I realized that BC was on his last when his lifelong friend and follower, James Aboud also known as Justice Aboud while wearing other hat, wrote a parting article about his friendship with BC and oddly the underlying message was that BC may have still been alive today if he had given up his agnostic atheist ways. I immediately thought I’d hate to appear before such a judge who could even publicly express those sentiments.
Nonetheless, BC was the hero Aboud could not and could make incisive comments on any topic without restraint. Aboud didn’t know what to say on many occasions even though he struggled trying to emulate BC.
Yes, I know Justice Aboud very well as I watched him show his partiality in the courtroom for a couple of years after which I thought he was looking for his own kind of fame and respect.
More important, my encounters with the Judge revealed a whole lot of how the elites in T&T society still operate something that BC tried his best to distance himself from based on his writings. A trait I have noticed in former CEO of the T&T Chamber, Gabriel Farah.
And I found out that these elites would have meetings and plot against the rest of society ostensibly for financial gain. Justice Aboud freely admitted that in my case. In other words he admitted he broke his oath as a judge when he had illicit meetings to discuss me. These improper meetings were contained in court documents. The judge obviously felt he would use his spare time to moralize on us lesser mortals. What happened next was that his colleagues on the bench rallied around one of their own, with the notable exception of Justice Devignes, to crush my case against Steve Castagne who was being accused of a different kind of misconduct. Maybe these judges misinterpreted the 1st rule in the Code of Ethics which states court officers must not conduct themselves in a manner which can be detrimental to the legal profession and which can discredit it.
Judges have the highest duty to protect the sanctity of the profession and the State which Justice Des Vignes knew. I understand Justice Des Vignes paid the ultimate price for that.
Personally, I am not guided by that rule and my rights to justice, even against the highest authority, is a higher calling. Justice Aboud and he ought to have recused himself for his admitted behavior (the illicit meetings) but instead he doubled down and his colleagues did everything in their power to shield him and the One Percent. All these events are stated in court records. For example, instead of striking out a false affidavit by one of Castagne’s witnesses, Dawn Ford, he allowed it. What Justice Aboud should have done was committed Mrs Ford, a Steve Castagne lackey, to jail for this serious offence. Instead, having done all those acts of omissions and / or misbehavior, Justice Aboud (James) was elevated to the exalted Court of Appeal. I’m very sure that BC knew of all of that which was enough to make anyone sick.
But, the people Justice Aboud was apparently ‘protecting’ was none other than BC’s family, Steve Castagne. BC’s wife is the niece of Steve Castagne. Steve Castagne is the great pretender to the Newsday throne who never paid a dime for shares that were allotted to him and therefore those share allocations were null and void. Justice Aboud would find nothing wrong with how Castagne could own shares without paying for them. Today, Newsday may be worth about a billion dollars which was stolen from me and the Chookolingo family who I gifted a sizeable amount of shares because of a false affidavit from that James had no problem with. This was common knowledge in the media fraternity since editor Suzanne Mills blew the lid on the fraudulent activity after she couldn’t take the duplicity anymore and she made well known to those in the fraternity she spoke to; of which BC was a prominent member. Mills failed to put basic security protocols in place because of what she was saying against the One Percent and their lackeys and BC knew what his uncle Steve was doing.
Anyway, this pappy show went all the way up to the CJ, when he knowingly and improperly entertained an appearance from my attorney Raj Joseph, when Mr Joseph had just retired from another judicial appointment that was made by the CJ himself. The point being that Mr Joseph’s appearance before the courts was forbidden unknown to me. Following that, a complaint was made against the CJ for misbehavior if public office and I am still awaiting a reply to my complaint … after 18 months.
Because of what took place with Justice Aboud, I can now say with confidence how the elites in this society fend for each other to the point of absurdity and are prepared to do anything to cover for each other. I’m guided that there’s no way BC could have missed all of this and it was James Aboud that made him sick and not his faith or lack thereof.
There were many other facts about this case that may have made BC unable to cope.
I will reveal just a few other people who I now know are in leagues with the billion dollar rip-off so that Mrs Ford could transfer the Newsday shares to Steve Castagne for $8 million.
The key player is an attorney, a former PNM senator, Mr Michael Coppin who made so many false statements to company shareholders it is mind boggling.
An auditing company called Keystone Audit and Assurance Services (I never heard of them) performed some very ‘neat’ footwork when they did 4 years of auditing for the company all signed on the same day after a couple of shareholders complained of the absence of valuations for the Newsday shares. Before Keystone got involved in preparing 4 years of audits, the company handed out ‘fake’ dividends from a slush fund operated by Dawn Ford, most notable without any audit whatsoever. Keystone was able to magically produce 4 years of audits to exactly match the ‘fake’ dividend. Not surprisingly, the 4 years of fake audit reports were sent to those requesting it by email. Keystone and their auditors ought to be immediately disbanded from practicing for issuing such bogus reports. The others shareholders who didn’t need to see the audits, all participated in the loot from the slush funds distributed by Dawn Ford. Each shareholder stood to receive at least $15 million dollars but word is that they were apparently happy to take less under the counter for whatever reason. Yet, with all the accusations made which ought to make lawyers and auditors lose their licenses to practice, no one has complained of all these serious ‘complaints’ which are now very much in the public domain.
But those minority shareholders who did not take any below the counter illegal money were told to ‘take it to court’ but instead they took it to the police in April 2022. The police Anti-Corruption Bureau division never responded up to today. It widely suspected that this unit is living up to its name of being called a politically appointed and motivated organization. Besides which, it is well known that police don’t need a formal report to pursue misdeeds which are in the public domain especially one of this magnitude involving millions of dollars due to the State while the PM is only interested in a $55 million unoccupied DPP office.
BC must have been shocked when editor Suzanne Mills reported to many of her colleagues in the media fraternity that she was marked for death for supporting my case against Uncle Steve and she actually turned up dead at her home. I too was marked for death since the 1990’s not long after I established the company. Logic would dictate that if the founder passed away, the directors would call the shots and appoint themselves owners. That is exactly what happened anyway since none of the pretenders ever paid a dime for the shares. This is what BC’s friend James Aboud found was OK. No wonder BC got very ill to the point where his body attacked again after he went into remission.
Maybe, BC actually went over his wife’s head and pleaded with Uncle Steve to do the right thing. I don’t know. He certainly had the gumption to do it. BC and James were on entirely different planes of existence.
Meanwhile, there’s more to come to expose the corporate greed of the 1% and how they amass billions of other people’s money.
I also learnt, besides the obvious fact that this is a mass conspiracy, that Choko was a target for the One Percent since the first oil boom when many of them got into illegal quick-rich schemes that Choko often exposed and this resulted in his 2 weeks in jail. These are the same One Percent oligarchs that Karen Nunez-Tesheira, former PNM finance minister, spoke about last year when she said these people are the top business people running the country.
Daniel Chookolingo
