Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er has de­nied he is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the Unit­ed States In­ter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vices (IRS) over his pur­chase of the João Have­lange Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya. Speak­ing to re­porters at the launch of an agri­cul­tur­al field ranger squad at Carlsen Field, Ch­agua­nas, yes­ter­day, Warn­er said he did not know why peo­ple were try­ing to un­der­mine him. He said the al­le­ga­tions against him had no ba­sis. Asked to re­spond to a Wired868 re­port which quot­ed Con­ca­caf pres­i­dent, Jef­frey Webb, as con­firm­ing the IRS ac­count­ing firm, BDO In­ter­na­tion­al, and glob­al le­gal com­pa­ny Si­d­ley Austin LLP were in­ves­ti­gat­ing him, Warn­er said he was not aware of that. He added: "That is so fool­ish that I don't care to com­ment on this. I am not aware of the IRS in­ves­ti­gat­ing or any­body in­ves­ti­gat­ing me. Not be­cause we are a small coun­try we are go­ing to lis­ten to that stu­pid­i­ty. I am sad that we are al­low­ing our­selves to be the laugh­ing stock of the world."

He al­so took a jab at COP's vice chair­man Ver­non de Li­ma, who moved a mo­tion on Sun­day to have Warn­er re­moved from Cab­i­net. Warn­er said: "I find it very strange be­cause I don't know any­body in the last few years who have been ex­posed in the me­dia as Warn­er. "Every­one wants Warn­er to be move so ask your­self why. I have nev­er faced a court or have en­quiry against me. No­body has ac­cused me, I nev­er take mon­ey from any­body pock­et and I have no al­le­ga­tions of any kind." He said some lawyers did not want him to bring down crime be­cause they would lose busi­ness. "Some peo­ple seem to be very fright­ened. There are lawyers who feel their busi­ness will be af­fect­ed if crime goes down. We have guys who were in pol­i­tics who are mon­ey-laun­der­ers," he added. On crime in Laven­tille, Warn­er said an an­ti-crime pack­age al­ready had been com­plet­ed and would be sent to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar this week.

He was con­fi­dent de­spite the re­cent mur­ders the crime sit­u­a­tion would be rec­ti­fied. He added: "I re­main op­ti­mistic crime will be re­duced con­sid­er­ably. We will make a dent in crime. I am not go­ing to be pes­simistic. At the end of the day I will give the as­sur­ance that we will have ac­tive mea­sures to re­duce crime." The Wired 868 re­port, writ­ten by Lasana Liburd, a free­lance jour­nal­ist, said glob­al le­gal com­pa­ny, Si­d­ley Austin LLP, was re­view­ing the mat­ter to de­ter­mine if the con­fed­er­a­tion had any le­gal right to the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence and whether there were any loans or guar­an­tees tak­en out on Con­ca­caf prop­er­ty. It said the Con­ca­caf ex­ec­u­tive was due to re­ceive a re­port on those in­ves­ti­ga­tions at an ex­tra­or­di­nary con­gress this month but Webb claimed the scale of the op­er­a­tion had forced a post­pone­ment un­til the first quar­ter of next year.