PNM gears up for court fight over Balisier House financing probe

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) says it is prepar­ing for a le­gal bat­tle af­ter con­firm­ing it has been served with court doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to the fi­nanc­ing of the ren­o­va­tion and con­struc­tion of its Tran­quil­i­ty Street, Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters, Bal­isi­er House.

The par­ty said its le­gal team is re­view­ing the doc­u­ments.

Last week, High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed grant­ed a Pre­lim­i­nary Un­ex­plained Wealth Or­der re­quir­ing the par­ty, through its trustees, to dis­close how the mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar project was fund­ed.

The or­der, grant­ed on Fri­day, was sought by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) un­der the pro­vi­sions of the Civ­il As­set Re­cov­ery and Man­age­ment and Un­ex­plained Wealth Act, which was in­tro­duced by the PNM while it was in gov­ern­ment in 2019.

Ques­tions sur­round­ing the fi­nanc­ing of the project had been raised re­peat­ed­ly by cur­rent Gov­ern­ment mem­bers, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, even be­fore the par­ty was elect­ed in April last year.

How­ev­er, PNM chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les yes­ter­day ques­tioned a video show­ing the doc­u­ments be­ing served on the par­ty’s gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings.

Gon­za­les said Cum­mings was served short­ly af­ter ar­riv­ing at the air­port short­ly af­ter 1 am yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing at a me­dia brief­ing held at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader in Port-of-Spain, Gon­za­les ques­tioned whether po­lice were in­volved in the re­lease of the footage and called for an ex­pla­na­tion as to how it reached the me­dia.

“The ques­tion I have to ask is, who took this pic­ture? Was a re­porter or re­porters arranged with the po­lice to meet the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary to cap­ture this shot? Was that pho­to tak­en by the po­lice and giv­en to the me­dia? And if that is the case, for what pur­pose? I am trou­bled by this de­vel­op­ment,” Gon­za­les said.

He said he had been told the doc­u­ments would be served at Bal­isi­er House at 1.30 pm yes­ter­day, rather than at the air­port.

The ques­tions come as the PNM con­tin­ues to raise con­cerns about what it de­scribes as pos­si­ble po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the fi­nances of its head­quar­ters.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Act­ing As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ram­dath Phillip, who is lead­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he said he was un­aware of the cir­cum­stances de­scribed by Gon­za­les but as­sured that the mat­ter would be in­ves­ti­gat­ed if the par­ty made a for­mal re­port.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les crit­i­cised the TTPS when asked whether the par­ty had made such a re­port.

“I’m sick of the TTPS be­ing used by politi­cians to do their dirty work and pre­tend­ing that it is in­de­pen­dent. All as­pects of this case are be­ing leaked to the me­dia. Even when they vis­it­ed Bal­isi­er House yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) and the day be­fore, that was leaked. I don’t think it was Amal­ga­mat­ed or SWAT leak­ing the in­for­ma­tion,” he said.

At­tempts to con­tact Cum­mings on the is­sue were un­suc­cess­ful up to news time.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is cur­rent­ly out of the coun­try.