PNM denies Balisier allegations; accuses government of political witch hunt

The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions sur­round­ing the fi­nanc­ing of its Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of us­ing State re­sources to pur­sue po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents in­stead of ad­dress­ing is­sues such as crime, the econ­o­my, un­em­ploy­ment, health­care and ed­u­ca­tion.

The PNM said it has as­sem­bled a le­gal team to ex­am­ine the de­vel­op­ments and will pur­sue all avail­able le­gal reme­dies to pro­tect the par­ty and those af­fect­ed.

In a state­ment on Sat­ur­day, the Op­po­si­tion par­ty said it had not re­ceived any of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence or been served with any High Court or­der in re­la­tion to re­ports that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had ob­tained ju­di­cial ap­proval to in­ves­ti­gate the fi­nanc­ing of the re­de­vel­op­ment of Bal­isi­er House and the par­ty's fundrais­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

The PNM de­nied any wrong­do­ing, say­ing there was "noth­ing im­prop­er, un­law­ful or se­cre­tive" about the fi­nanc­ing of its head­quar­ters or the fundrais­ing ac­tiv­i­ties un­der­tak­en over many years.

It said Bal­isi­er House and the land on which it stands were ac­quired more than 65 years ago and that the re­de­vel­op­ment was nev­er un­der­tak­en in se­cret. The par­ty main­tained that it had law­ful­ly raised funds for more than 15 years through pub­lic ap­peals, par­ty events and vol­un­tary do­na­tions from mem­bers and sup­port­ers.

The par­ty claimed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion formed part of a po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed cam­paign against it.

"It be­gan with a de­lib­er­ate pub­lic smear cam­paign by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress... It has now pro­gressed to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice al­leged­ly seek­ing and re­ceiv­ing ju­di­cial au­thor­i­ty to pur­sue what is a po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed witch hunt," the state­ment said.

The PNM al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for what it de­scribed as the mis­use of pub­lic re­sources.

"Rather than fo­cus its at­ten­tion on the econ­o­my, crime, un­em­ploy­ment, health­care, ed­u­ca­tion and the many chal­lenges con­fronting cit­i­zens every day, this UNC Gov­ern­ment ap­pears de­ter­mined to weaponise the ma­chin­ery and fi­nan­cial re­sources of the State against its prin­ci­pal po­lit­i­cal op­po­nent," it said.

The par­ty fur­ther al­leged there was an in­creas­ing pat­tern of po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion through the use of State in­sti­tu­tions and warned that cit­i­zens should be con­cerned if pub­lic bod­ies were per­ceived to be used for par­ti­san pur­pos­es.

The state­ment fol­lows me­dia re­ports that High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed grant­ed a Pre­lim­i­nary Un­ex­plained Wealth Or­der ap­pli­ca­tion brought by the TTPS un­der the Civ­il As­set Re­cov­ery and Man­age­ment and Un­ex­plained Wealth Act.

Ac­cord­ing to court doc­u­ments, po­lice are seek­ing to com­pel the PNM and its trustees to ex­plain the source of fund­ing for the mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar re­de­vel­op­ment of Bal­isi­er House as part of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to whether the par­ty's wealth ex­ceeds its law­ful­ly ob­tained in­come.

The af­fi­davit filed by act­ing As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ram­dath Phillip al­leges in­ves­ti­ga­tors sus­pect the project may have been fi­nanced, in part, through cor­rupt arrange­ments in­volv­ing gov­ern­ment con­trac­tors who re­ceived favourable treat­ment in the award of State con­tracts while the PNM was in of­fice be­tween 2015 and 2025.