Businessman and wife detained

An­na-Lisa Paul &

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Just 13 days af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar en­dorsed a warn­ing by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie that no seg­ment of so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing the so-called “one per cent,” was be­yond the reach of the law, the own­er of Blue Wa­ters Lim­it­ed, Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve, were ar­rest­ed by po­lice yes­ter­day.

Al­though it re­mained un­clear up to last evening ex­act­ly what charges the cou­ple were fac­ing, the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is­sued a re­lease con­firm­ing that their ar­rests had re­sult­ed from an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro con­firmed the ar­rests, but all oth­er re­lat­ed ques­tions, even at a TTPS me­dia brief­ing where the ar­rests were an­nounced, went unan­swered.

And even while the TTPS re­mained de­lib­er­ate­ly vague re­gard­ing the de­ten­tion of the West­moor­ings cou­ple, their fam­i­ly and friends al­so main­tained a ring of si­lence yes­ter­day.

But Gilbert Pe­tersen, SC, who is part of the le­gal team rep­re­sent­ing the cou­ple, con­firmed their ar­rests last evening.

He said the cou­ple had been in po­lice cus­tody all day and when asked where they were be­ing held, he said he was un­aware, as of­fi­cers had kept them on the move all day.

Pe­tersen is joined by Faris Al-Rawi, SC, on the le­gal team. Con­tact­ed last evening, Al-Rawi claimed he was head­ing in­to a meet­ing and could not com­ment at the time.

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia was told that plain­clothes po­lice of­fi­cers from a spe­cial­ist unit ar­rived at the cou­ple’s home around 5 am yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing which they ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant and seized sev­er­al elec­tron­ic de­vices, in­clud­ing lap­tops and cell­phones, from the oc­cu­pants.

TTPS Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer ASP Owie Rus­sell read a me­dia re­lease on the ar­rest dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, he said he was un­able to an­swer ques­tions re­lat­ing to the ar­rest when pressed by jour­nal­ists for more de­tails.

The re­lease, which was dis­sem­i­nat­ed by the TTPS at 11.25 am, said, “Of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ed search war­rants law­ful­ly is­sued by the Supreme Court of Ju­di­ca­ture at lo­ca­tions in West­moor­ings and Trinci­ty ear­li­er to­day (yes­ter­day).

“Dur­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of these war­rants, two in­di­vid­u­als were de­tained and are cur­rent­ly as­sist­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tors with en­quiries. No charges have been laid at this time.”

The TTPS em­pha­sised that, “the ex­e­cu­tion of a war­rant is a stan­dard in­ves­tiga­tive pro­ce­dure and does not con­sti­tute a find­ing of wrong­do­ing.”

“All ac­tions tak­en by of­fi­cers were con­duct­ed strict­ly with­in the pa­ra­me­ters of the law, un­der ju­di­cial au­thor­i­ty, and with full re­gard for the rights and rep­u­ta­tion­al in­ter­ests of all per­sons in­volved,” the re­lease point­ed out.

It added, “No con­clu­sions should be drawn re­gard­ing the sta­tus of any in­di­vid­ual un­til in­ves­ti­ga­tions are com­plet­ed and any ev­i­dence is prop­er­ly as­sessed in ac­cor­dance with due process.

“As this mat­ter re­mains ac­tive, no ad­di­tion­al de­tails can be dis­closed at this stage.”

How­ev­er, the TTPS as­sured that it “re­mains com­mit­ted to con­duct­ing all in­ves­ti­ga­tions with pro­fes­sion­al­ism, fair­ness, and re­spect for the rule of law.”

Ef­forts to se­cure com­ments from De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der and Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ny Beck­les were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day, as they did not re­spond to calls and mes­sages.

Out­spo­ken busi­ness­man Gary Aboud yes­ter­day urged the pub­lic not to spec­u­late on the events which had led to the cou­ple’s ar­rest.

“I un­der­stand the ur­gency of speak­ing out on a mat­ter, but we must be re­spon­si­ble,” he said.

Pressed fur­ther, he added, “I don’t have enough in­for­ma­tion to make an in­formed com­ment. If I knew the cir­cum­stances, I could say some­thing.”

He added, “All I could say now is that I sup­port the pur­suit of jus­tice with­out ex­cep­tion.

“I sup­port the po­lice of­fi­cers in the line of du­ty. Let us see what is the truth and let us sup­port our men in uni­form, re­gard­less of the hurt and the feel­ings that we might have.”

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, sev­er­al busi­ness cham­bers said they had tak­en a de­ci­sion to re­frain from com­ment­ing on the de­ten­tion of Hadeed and his wife.

They not­ed that there was un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the mat­ter, and too much spec­u­la­tion cir­cu­lat­ing pub­licly.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the or­gan­i­sa­tions said it re­mained un­clear what Hadeed had been held for and in the ab­sence of ver­i­fied in­for­ma­tion from the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, they pre­ferred to re­serve com­ment at this time.

In back­ing up claims made about the “one per cent” made by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al on June 12, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so al­leged that some cur­rent and for­mer se­nior bank­ing of­fi­cials had fa­cil­i­tat­ed for­eign cur­ren­cy trans­ac­tions for lo­cal busi­ness­es linked to in­ter­na­tion­al drug car­tels.

She re­vealed that the Gov­ern­ment had been re­ceiv­ing for­eign as­sis­tance to track bil­lions of US dol­lars re­port­ed­ly fun­nelled out of T&T over the past 20 years, in­clud­ing mon­ey al­leged­ly chan­nelled through lo­cal busi­ness­es be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to for­eign ac­counts con­nect­ed to or­gan­ised crime.

“Some cur­rent and for­mer high-rank­ing of­fi­cials of lo­cal banks fa­cil­i­tat­ed the sale of mas­sive amounts of for­eign cur­ren­cy to lo­cal busi­ness­es, which was then trans­ferred to for­eign ac­counts linked to car­tels and al­so used to pur­chase re­al es­tate hold­ings and busi­ness­es in col­lab­o­ra­tion with car­tels,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Her com­ments came the day af­ter Je­re­mie used his con­tri­bu­tion to the par­lia­men­tary de­bate on the ex­ten­sion the State of Emer­gency (SoE) to warn that Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to pur­sue not on­ly street-lev­el crim­i­nal gangs, but al­so white-col­lar fig­ures be­lieved to have prof­it­ed from or­gan­ised crime.

Dur­ing the de­bate, Je­re­mie said Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus will now ex­tend to gangs, in­clud­ing those who de­scribe them­selves in per­cent­ages, such as the “one per cent,” which has been used to re­fer to the Syr­i­an/Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty in T&T.

“An in­frac­tion of the law by the pow­er­ful and the one per cent is no dif­fer­ent from an in­frac­tion of the law by the poor lit­tle black youths in Mor­vant and Laven­tille. We are not here speak­ing to ac­tion tak­en by our al­lies in the north. We have no con­trol over that,” the AG said in ref­er­ence to cit­i­zens who had their visas re­voked by the US gov­ern­ment, some of whom he said had vis­it­ed him seek­ing help to get the mat­ter rec­ti­fied.

“What we do have con­trol over, is what our law en­force­ment tells us about some of the ac­tiv­i­ties of these per­sons. The time when they re­ceived the keys to the city and li­cence to mash up the place. That time is over.”

In her de­fence of the AG’s claim the fol­low­ing day, af­ter it drew crit­i­cism from the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty and oth­er sec­tors of so­ci­ety, Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­sist­ed that Je­re­mie’s com­ments were in­tend­ed to re­in­force a sim­ple prin­ci­ple—that no in­di­vid­ual or or­gan­i­sa­tion should ex­pect im­mu­ni­ty from crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­cause of wealth, sta­tus or in­flu­ence.

“Whether crim­i­nal el­e­ments iden­ti­fy them­selves as the ‘Sixx’, the ‘Sev­en’, the ‘One Per cent’, or by any oth­er name, they are all sub­ject to the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go and will be treat­ed ac­cord­ing­ly by the jus­tice sys­tem,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so sought to dis­tance the claim from any eth­nic con­sid­er­a­tions.

“The one per cent com­mu­ni­ty con­sists of per­sons of many eth­nic groups. It does not con­sist of a sin­gu­lar eth­nic group. The State is com­mit­ted to up­hold­ing the rule of law fair­ly and con­sis­tent­ly,” the PM said.

She added, “There can be no spe­cial treat­ment and no im­mu­ni­ty from le­gal con­se­quences for any­one based on wealth, sta­tus, or as­so­ci­a­tion. Law en­force­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to en­sure that the laws of the land are ap­plied equal­ly to all.”