Kamla backs AG’s warning to wealthy elite

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has thrown her full sup­port be­hind the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s warn­ing that no seg­ment of so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing the so-called “one per cent”, is be­yond the reach of the law, al­leg­ing that some cur­rent and for­mer se­nior bank­ing of­fi­cials fa­cil­i­tat­ed for­eign cur­ren­cy trans­ac­tions for lo­cal busi­ness­es linked to in­ter­na­tion­al drug car­tels.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day and fol­low­ing ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, the Prime Min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment was re­ceiv­ing for­eign as­sis­tance to track bil­lions of US dol­lars that left Trinidad and To­ba­go 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 a day af­ter Je­re­mie used his con­tri­bu­tion to the par­lia­men­tary de­bate on ex­tend­ing 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.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her ad­min­is­tra­tion ful­ly sup­port­ed that ap­proach.

“Pur­suant to the max­im ‘Jus­tice is blind’, the law ap­plies equal­ly to every cit­i­zen, re­gard­less of their fi­nan­cial sta­tus, so­cial stand­ing, po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions, or in­flu­ence.”

The Prime Min­is­ter 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.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so sought to dis­tance the de­bate from any eth­nic con­sid­er­a­tions, af­ter crit­i­cism emerged fol­low­ing Je­re­mie’s re­marks in Par­lia­ment.

“The one per cent com­mu­ni­ty con­sists of per­sons of many eth­nic groups. It does not con­sist of a sin­gu­lar eth­nic group,” the PM said.

“The State is com­mit­ted to up­hold­ing the rule of law fair­ly and con­sis­tent­ly.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said law en­force­ment agen­cies had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ap­ply the law equal­ly and fair­ly to all cit­i­zens.

“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,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar fur­ther ar­gued that the scale of drug traf­fick­ing through T&T over the past quar­ter-cen­tu­ry had raised se­ri­ous unan­swered ques­tions about how crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es were fi­nanced and how il­lic­it prof­its were moved through the fi­nan­cial sys­tem.

“Bil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of il­le­gal drugs have passed through this coun­try over the last 25 years and no one can an­swer how it was paid for,” she said.

The Prime Min­is­ter said Gov­ern­ment was now work­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to tar­get both nar­cotics traf­fick­ing and mon­ey laun­der­ing op­er­a­tions.

“The State is fi­nal­ly get­ting as­sis­tance to deal with drug traf­fick­ing and mon­ey laun­der­ing and we will let the chips fall where they may,” she de­clared.

The Prime Min­is­ter sought to re­as­sure cit­i­zens that law-abid­ing in­di­vid­u­als had noth­ing to fear from on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

“All law-abid­ing cit­i­zens have noth­ing to fear from the ac­tions of the US and lo­cal law en­force­ment agen­cies,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not iden­ti­fy any banks, busi­ness­es or in­di­vid­u­als.

Dur­ing the de­bate on Wednes­day, Je­re­mie claimed that cer­tain mem­bers of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s so-called “one per cent” have had their Unit­ed States visas re­voked, say­ing he was in­formed by sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als whose visas were can­celled and sug­gest­ing the US act­ed based on in­tel­li­gence gath­ered about their ac­tiv­i­ties.

He said, “We all know that our Amer­i­can friends have so­phis­ti­cat­ed means of in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing. They ap­pear now to have de­ter­mined that cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als should not, as a re­sult of their ac­tiv­i­ties, be trav­el­ling to the Unit­ed States, and they have tak­en ac­tion to en­sure that that does not hap­pen.”

How­ev­er, Je­re­mie stressed that the Gov­ern­ment had no role in those visa de­ci­sions.

He ar­gued that the “one per cent” is a pow­er­ful and in­flu­en­tial group that con­trols sig­nif­i­cant seg­ments of the econ­o­my, en­joyed close ties to the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, and should not be­lieve their wealth places them above the law.