The fol­low­ing is the full text of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie's state­ment in the Low­er House, yes­ter­day.

Mr Speak­er, when I ad­dressed this Ho­n­ourable House on Wednes­day Sep­tem­ber 23, 2009, in my con­tri­bu­tion on the 2009 to 2010 bud­get, I gave a com­mit­ment that the work of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACIB) of the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al which had to some ex­tent fall­en in­to abeyance, would be re­vived. This unit along with the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty and the Of­fice of the DPP make the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al a force to be reck­oned with in Gov­ern­ment's an­ti-cor­rup­tion bat­tles.

The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in part through the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, has al­ways been com­mit­ted to find and in­ves­ti­gate cor­rup­tion wher­ev­er it ex­ists, and I wish to take the op­por­tu­ni­ty this af­ter­noon to ad­dress this Ho­n­ourable House on re­cent is­sues which have en­gaged na­tion­al at­ten­tion. How­ev­er, in so do­ing I wish to make it clear that I do not be­lieve that crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions should be the sub­ject of wide­spread pub­lic­i­ty or com­ment and it has gen­er­al­ly been the pol­i­cy of the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al that these in­ves­ti­ga­tions be con­duct­ed with the ut­most of dis­cre­tion in keep­ing with ba­sic le­gal prin­ci­ples in­clud­ing nat­ur­al jus­tice and the pre­sump­tion of in­no­cence.

I am forced how­ev­er to ad­dress the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty through this Ho­n­ourable House be­cause of the wide­spread ru­mour mon­ger­ing and de­lib­er­ate mis­in­for­ma­tion that re­gret­tably con­tin­ues to per­vade our so­ci­ety. These ru­mours have a life cy­cle that be­gins in old talk be­fore quick­ly be­ing trans­formed in­to news­pa­per sto­ries, In­ter­net re­ports, be­fore ul­ti­mate­ly ap­pear­ing as quo­ta­tions in pseu­do-aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nals. I have al­ready ad­dressed the House on the is­sue of the Abu Bakr af­fi­davit, and the fact that a High Court Judge, who I main­tain er­ro­neous­ly, im­prop­er­ly, and in di­rect con­tra­ven­tion to the Or­der of the Court of Ap­peal, re­ferred the af­fi­davit of an ad­mit­ted in­sur­rec­tion­ist to the DPP, for in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

De­spite the ori­gin of the af­fi­davit, and the fact that the ex­is­tence of any deal was de­nied on oath in the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of the very de­po­nent to the af­fi­davit, the bu­reau has an oblig­a­tion to in­ves­ti­gate, and the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, like any cit­i­zen has the right to re­fute the al­le­ga­tions. This is ex­act­ly what I un­der­stand to be tak­ing place. The Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Works was a mem­ber of Cab­i­net at the time that these mat­ters are al­leged to have tak­en place, and there­fore is a like­ly can­di­date for in­ter­view in the in­ves­tiga­tive process. That is all that has tran­spired, there is noth­ing in what has tak­en place which war­rants the dra­mat­ic and sen­sa­tion­al head­lines which have been dom­i­nat­ing our na­tion's me­dia. I al­so wish to re­fer to the me­dia re­ports last week of an un­de­clared Cay­man Is­land ac­count, said to be held in the name of a for­mer Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter and his wife.

The ACIB has ful­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed these re­ports, and has de­ter­mined that they were a to­tal fab­ri­ca­tion and a hoax cal­cu­lat­ed to cre­ate con­fu­sion in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. These are but two ex­am­ples of the de­lib­er­ate mis­chief which has sud­den­ly be­come per­va­sive and ul­ti­mate­ly ends up be­ing promi­nent­ly dis­played in the me­dia. Again, while I would have pre­ferred not to com­ment on these mat­ters, the un­re­lent­ing fer­vor over these re­ports, and the ease with which they are be­ing dis­sem­i­nat­ed was such that I had no choice but to com­ment.�I have al­so read re­ports that In­ter­pol has con­firmed the au­then­tic­i­ty of doc­u­ments pro­duced by the Con­gress of the Peo­ple in the Calder Hart mat­ter.

I wish to re­port that the ACIB has been dili­gent­ly pur­su­ing this mat­ter, and has re­ceived no such con­fir­ma­tion from ei­ther In­ter­pol or the Malaysian au­thor­i­ties. I bring these mat­ters to the at­ten­tion of this Hon­or­able House and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty sim­ply to re­in­force the point that not every ru­mour should be tak­en as fact, and that while the ACIB and the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al pur­sue in­ves­ti­ga­tions, it will not be dis­tract­ed by op­por­tunis­tic at­tempts to ben­e­fit po­lit­i­cal­ly or oth­er­wise from what are se­ri­ous mat­ters. I urge the me­dia and the pop­u­la­tion to be dis­cern­ing of un­ver­i­fied re­ports and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. While ad­mit­ted­ly, we are op­er­at­ing in a time of height­ened po­lit­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty, much en­er­gy is be­ing ex­pend­ed to dis­sem­i­nate mis­in­for­ma­tion with a clear pur­pose of dis­turb­ing the peace and sta­bil­i­ty to which we have grown ac­cus­tomed un­der this cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion.