Rachael Es­pinet

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wayne Sturge wants the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to in­ves­ti­gate the be­hav­iour of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi for his al­leged in­volve­ment in what Sturge deems a ques­tion­able loan agree­ment be­tween HDC and Noel Gar­cia.

Sturge claims Gar­cia, who was man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) and is cur­rent­ly the chair­man of Ude­cott, was grant­ed a loan from the HDC.

At a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day Sturge pro­duced doc­u­ments which he claimed were ques­tion­able trans­ac­tions.

The trans­ac­tion in 2007 in­volves a loan re­quest from Gar­cia to cov­er med­ical ex­pens­es for his son, Chris­t­ian. The amount of the loan, $166,000, was ap­proved by the HDC. How­ev­er, Sturge claimed Al-Rawi re­viewed and rec­om­mend­ed the loan and then sat at a sub­se­quent meet­ing to ap­prove it.

"Al-Rawi, in the fourth board meet­ing un­der­took to look at the doc­u­ments, look at the leg­is­la­tions and ad­vise the board on whether it should pro­ceed and how it should pro­ceed to grant this loan to off­set med­ical ex­pens­es for Mr Gar­i­ca.

"Hav­ing un­der­tak­en that task, Mr Al-Rawi was du­ty bound to ex­cuse him­self from the sixth meet­ing, which is the meet­ing held where he ad­vised the board to ac­cept his own ad­vice, his own ad­vice in which he sat in a dif­fer­ent ca­pac­i­ty on the sub-com­mit­tee of the board on le­gal mat­ters," Sturge said.

A quote from the in­ter­nal au­dit done on the mat­ter reads: "There are no doc­u­ments to show a dis­burse­mentof TT$166,000 to Noel Gar­cia. There are, how­ev­er, doc­u­ments in the means of two let­ters in­struct­ing Re­pub­lic Bank to wire trans­fer �30,000 and �5,000 re­spec­tive­ly to Chris­t­ian Gar­cia."

Sturge point­ed to an ex­cerpt of an au­dit doc­u­ment of the HDC, say­ing it was trou­bling the amount of mon­ey trans­ferred to Chris­t­ian Gar­cia, the son of Noel Gar­cia, was more than the mon­ey ap­proved by the loan. The trans­fer of the ac­count is more than TT$400,000.

Re­spond­ing to Sturge's al­le­ga­tions, Al-Rawi said that mat­ter was not a new is­sue and it has been dealt with on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions.

"This spe­cif­ic mat­ter con­cern­ing Noel Gar­cia is not a new mat­ter to Trinidad and To­ba­go. In­deed I re­call with ut­most clar­i­ty that on Sep­tem­ber 17, 2010, Roodal Mooni­lal, as the min­is­ter then, in Par­lia­ment in the Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Bill, raised this is­sue and I in fact dealt with the Mooni­lal al­le­ga­tions on Sep­tem­ber 20,2010 in the Par­lia­ment," he added.