PNM rejects Balisier House funding probe as political persecution

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has de­scribed le­gal pro­ceed­ings for it to dis­close the fi­nanc­ing for the ren­o­va­tion and con­struc­tion of its Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain as a po­lit­i­cal witch hunt.

The par­ty is­sued a press re­lease yes­ter­day af­ter­noon to re­spond to a news­pa­per re­port that High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed had grant­ed a Pre­lim­i­nary Un­ex­plained Wealth Or­der call­ing on the par­ty through its trustees to di­vulge how the mul­ti-mil­lion project was fund­ed.

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

In the re­lease, PNM Chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les not­ed that the par­ty had not been served with of­fi­cial court cor­re­spon­dence be­fore the re­port was pub­lished.

“The re­ports, which in­clude gross­ly ex­ag­ger­at­ed fig­ures, seek to cast doubt on the le­git­i­ma­cy of the fi­nanc­ing of Bal­isi­er House and the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment re­jects any sug­ges­tion that there was any­thing im­prop­er, un­law­ful or se­cre­tive about the fund­ing of its head­quar­ters or the fund-rais­ing ac­tiv­i­ties un­der­tak­en by the par­ty over many years,” Gon­za­les said.

He not­ed that the land, lo­cat­ed at the cor­ner of Vic­to­ria Av­enue and Tran­quil­li­ty Street in Port-of-Spain, was ac­quired by the par­ty over 65 years ago and that the re­cent re­de­vel­op­ment, which is still on­go­ing, was nev­er done in se­cret.

“For well over 15 years, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment has en­gaged in law­ful fund-rais­ing through par­ty ac­tiv­i­ties, pub­lic ap­peals, ini­tia­tives and vol­un­tary do­na­tions from thou­sands of mem­bers, sup­port­ers and well-wish­ers who be­lieved in pre­serv­ing one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s most en­dur­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions,” Gon­za­les said.

“Many cit­i­zens proud­ly con­tributed to that ef­fort be­cause they un­der­stood that strong po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions strength­en our democ­ra­cy,” he added.

Gon­za­les sug­gest­ed that the court pro­ceed­ings are the cul­mi­na­tion of a pub­lic smear cam­paign ini­ti­at­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

“It then es­ca­lat­ed through the abuse of Par­lia­men­tary Priv­i­lege, where se­ri­ous, un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed al­le­ga­tions were made against the PNM un­der the pro­tec­tion of Par­lia­ment. 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,” Gon­za­les said.

He stat­ed that the UNC was op­posed to cam­paign fi­nance leg­is­la­tion, which was al­so put for­ward un­der the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“To­day, the very same po­lit­i­cal par­ty that re­ject­ed cam­paign fi­nance re­form and has been at the cen­tre of well-doc­u­ment­ed cor­rup­tion, po­lit­i­cal kick­back and bid-rig­ging scan­dals now seeks to cast sus­pi­cion on the law­ful fund-rais­ing ac­tiv­i­ties of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment,” Gon­za­les said.

He sug­gest­ed that the cur­rent UNC-led coali­tion Gov­ern­ment was seek­ing to “weaponise the ma­chin­ery and fi­nan­cial re­sources of the State against its prin­ci­pal po­lit­i­cal op­po­nent” in­stead of ad­dress­ing top­i­cal na­tion­al is­sues such as the econ­o­my, crime, un­em­ploy­ment, health­care, and ed­u­ca­tion.

“This con­tin­u­ing mis­use of scarce pub­lic re­sources in pur­suit of po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion is yet an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the abuse of au­thor­i­ty that has come to de­fine this Gov­ern­ment’s short but dev­as­tat­ing pe­ri­od in of­fice,” Gon­za­les said.

“The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment has ob­served an in­creas­ing­ly dis­turb­ing pat­tern in which State in­sti­tu­tions are utilised not on­ly to pur­sue po­lit­i­cal ad­ver­saries but al­so to ob­tain per­son­al in­for­ma­tion on those in­di­vid­u­als, cre­at­ing a re­al and le­git­i­mate con­cern that such in­for­ma­tion may ul­ti­mate­ly be mis­used for par­ti­san po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es,” he added.

Gon­za­les said that the par­ty had al­ready as­sem­bled a le­gal team to re­spond to the or­der once it is prop­er­ly served and would pur­sue every le­gal rem­e­dy avail­able to pro­tect it and those af­fect­ed.

“We re­main con­fi­dent that truth will pre­vail over pro­pa­gan­da, jus­tice will pre­vail over po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion and democ­ra­cy will pre­vail over tyran­ny,” he said.

The move by the TTPS came a day af­ter for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley claimed that he had been threat­ened by “cer­tain of­fi­cials of state” over the par­ty’s head­quar­ters.

“They could tar­get me if they wish be­cause I’ve been get­ting threats from cer­tain of­fi­cials of state that I am next, and Bal­isi­er House is next,” Row­ley said in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia’s Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics Akash Sama­roo on Thurs­day.

The is­sue of fi­nanc­ing for the project had been raised nu­mer­ous times in the past by cur­rent Gov­ern­ment mem­bers, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, even be­fore be­ing elect­ed in April last year.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment in March, Per­sad-Bisses­sar stat­ed, “The PNM hi­er­ar­chy fat­tened their pock­ets from their lo­cal drug mafia fi­nanciers while the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go suf­fered. A short dis­tance away, the new blood-red Bal­isi­er House stands as a grave­stone to drug mon­ey, pae­dophil­ia, and theft.”

The TTPS is­sued a press re­lease late yes­ter­day evening con­firm­ing the le­gal ac­tion, which is at a pre­lim­i­nary stage and will be heard and de­ter­mined af­ter the par­ty and its trustees of­fi­cial­ly re­spond.

“A Pre­lim­i­nary Un­ex­plained Wealth Or­der is an in­ter­im mea­sure grant­ed by the Court and does not rep­re­sent a fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion of li­a­bil­i­ty and wrong­do­ing,” it said.

“The mat­ter is be­fore the Court, and due process will be ob­served at every stage,” it added.

The TTPS stat­ed that it is com­mit­ted to in­ves­ti­gat­ing al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion, white-col­lar and fi­nan­cial crime with­out fear or favour.

“All per­sons and en­ti­ties are equal be­fore the law and ac­count­abil­i­ty will be pur­sued through the ju­di­cial process,” it said.

While it ac­knowl­edged sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic in­ter­est in the de­vel­op­ment, it called on cit­i­zens not to jump to con­clu­sions and al­low the ju­di­cial process to take its course.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, SC, to an­swer ques­tions re­lat­ed to the court pro­ceed­ings, in­clud­ing a Unit­ed King­dom con­sul­tan­cy firm pur­port­ed­ly re­tained by his of­fice to val­ue the project and the le­gal team re­tained by the TTPS, in­clud­ing two British bar­ris­ters.

Je­re­mie said Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro was bet­ter placed to an­swer some of the ques­tions.

“We just as­sist in bud­gets and spend­ing,” Je­re­mie said.

Ad­dress­ing the need for for­eign at­tor­neys, Je­re­mie said: “The leg­is­la­tion is new in this ju­ris­dic­tion but is mod­elled on prece­dents in oth­er parts of the Com­mon­wealth.”

He al­so point­ed out that his pre­de­ces­sor, Faris Al-Rawi, who now serves as an Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor and un­der whose tenure the leg­is­la­tion was pi­lot­ed, re­cent­ly called for full ac­ti­va­tion of the leg­is­la­tion cur­rent­ly be­ing utilised against his po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

Sev­er­al sources close to the TTPS probe in­to the par­ty’s head­quar­ters claimed that it stemmed from in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by a con­fi­den­tial in­for­mant from in­side the par­ty with in­ti­mate knowl­edge of the project.

In his af­fi­davit at­tached to the ap­pli­ca­tion, ASP Ram­dath Phillip, act­ing head of the TTPS Le­gal Unit, claimed that there are rea­son­able grounds to sus­pect that the re­spon­dent’s to­tal wealth ex­ceeds the val­ue of their law­ful­ly ob­tained wealth and that the prop­er­ty was ob­tained through the com­mis­sion of a spec­i­fied of­fence.

He claimed that a re­port pre­pared by the Berke­ley Re­search Group (UK) Lim­it­ed val­ued the work al­ready com­plet­ed at $73.272 mil­lion and that the new build­ing, still un­der con­struc­tion at $118.4 mil­lion when com­plet­ed.

He sug­gest­ed that in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the fundrais­ing ini­tia­tives pub­licly claimed by the PNM ap­peared in­suf­fi­cient to cov­er the costs.

Phillip al­so ques­tioned why con­struc­tion was stopped af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion in April last year.

“I sus­pect that the demit­ting of PNM from of­fice brought an end to the cor­rupt fund­ing of the con­struc­tion of this build­ing,” Phillip said.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that there were sus­pi­cions that com­pa­nies that worked on the project, in­clud­ing those linked to a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber, pro­vid­ed ser­vices in ex­change for gov­ern­ment con­tracts.

Phillip al­so raised con­cerns over leaks re­lat­ed to the probe to per­sons who may be sub­ject to it.

“I have overnight seen, heard, and read state­ments that have been made by for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that have giv­en me rea­son to be­lieve that in­for­ma­tion form­ing part of this in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been leaked,” he said.

The TTPS is seek­ing the dis­clo­sure of its bank and fi­nan­cial records re­lat­ed to do­na­tions and pay­ments for the project.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the TTPS was in the process of serv­ing the court doc­u­ments on the par­ty’s of­fi­cials up to late yes­ter­day. Sources said that po­lice of­fi­cers were hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in lo­cat­ing sev­er­al of­fi­cials, who they be­lieve may be aboard at this time.