The Cen­tral Bank has cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied re­ports pub­lished in both the News­day and Ex­press news­pa­pers yes­ter­day that po­lice of­fi­cers had vis­it­ed the in­sti­tu­tion, in­ter­viewed its of­fi­cers and seized doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to a per­for­mance bond is­sued by a com­pa­ny for a Ude­cott project. The er­ro­neous re­port was first car­ried on Thurs­day night on lo­cal tele­vi­sion chan­nel TV 6, which is af­fil­i­at­ed to the Ex­press news­pa­per as both are owned by the One Caribbean Me­dia (OCM) group.

The Guardian re­ceived the same in­for­ma­tion as its two news­pa­per ri­vals but was able to ver­i­fy with its sources at the Cen­tral Bank and with­in the po­lice ser­vice that the in­for­ma­tion was in­cor­rect. In the state­ment yes­ter­day, the Cen­tral Bank said it wished to state cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that there had been "no search­es nor seizures of any doc­u­ments or oth­er ma­te­r­i­al by ACIB or the Fraud Squad at the Cen­tral Bank, whether re­lat­ed to Ude­cott or any oth­er mat­ter." The Cen­tral Bank said that while it had dis­cus­sions in the past with the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau, "at no time was any al­le­ga­tion of neg­li­gence raised against the Cen­tral Bank by ACIB."

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, the Cen­tral Bank said it was pre­pared at any time to ful­ly co-op­er­ate with le­git­i­mate re­quests for in­for­ma­tion in ac­cor­dance with the laws of T&T. The Cen­tral Bank added that it had "re­quest­ed a full, im­me­di­ate and promi­nent re­trac­tion of the state­ments made in the re­spec­tive tele­vi­sion and news­pa­per re­ports as it re­lates to the mat­ters con­cern­ing the Cen­tral Bank and its of­fi­cers." Over 21 per cent of OCM shares, the group's largest block, is owned by Cli­co, the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny that is now un­der the con­trol of the Cen­tral Bank.