Yvonne Webb

The An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau has been asked to in­ves­ti­gate re­ports that Ju­liana Pe­na, the spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er to for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning may have used state funds through the coun­try's for­eign mis­sions to fi­nance her over­seas trav­els. This was one of sev­er­al star­tling rev­e­la­tions made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar about the elu­sive Pe­na and the con­tro­ver­sial Light­house of the Lord Je­sus Christ church which was be­ing con­struct­ed for her at the Heights of Gua­napo. Speak­ing on the hus­tings in Pe­nal on Thurs­day night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "There is a trail of e-mail cor­re­spon­dence at the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al which is sug­gest­ing that Mrs Pe­na may have been col­lect­ing funds from our for­eign em­bassies to fund her jet-set­ting and globe-trot­ting lifestyles."

She called on Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley who was in the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion to say if he had any knowl­edge of this lat­est scan­dal sur­round­ing Pe­na. "I want to ask Dr Row­ley whether he knows any­thing about state funds be­ing used through our for­eign mis­sions as a slush fund to fi­nance the lifestyle of Mrs Pe­na," she said. The ten­ta­cles of cor­rup­tion, the Prime Min­is­ter ar­gued, had reached every trans­ac­tion the for­mer Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion was in­volved in. "We are now bom­bard­ed with an avalanche of cor­rupt deeds on their part," she said as she brought to the fore more star­tling rev­e­la­tions about the three and one quar­ter acres of agri­cul­tur­al state lands used to put up the church.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­closed that the land on which the church was be­ing con­struct­ed, be­fore it was de­stroyed by loot­ers, was nev­er legal­ly trans­ferred to Pe­na or her or­gan­i­sa­tion. "In fact, the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands has in­formed us that Mrs Pe­na did not agree to pay the rent for the lease of the land, and so the lease was nev­er signed, nev­er ex­e­cut­ed, nev­er com­plet­ed." She told her au­di­ence that this meant that the State was and re­mains the law­ful own­ers of the land at Gua­napo. In light of this she asked: "If Mrs Pe­na and or­gan­i­sa­tion, as is al­leged, could not af­ford to pay the rent of the land, how come they were get­ting $30 mil­lion, to fi­nance this rapid con­struc­tion, even with a swim­ming pool. How did that hap­pen?"

Charg­ing that the Man­ning-led Cab­i­net au­tho­rised and was dri­ving this project all along, she con­clud­ed that this was the rea­son why no one came for­ward to claim own­er­ship when the build­ing was be­ing de­stroyed af­ter the PNM lost the elec­tion. She ques­tioned how state agen­cies, in­clud­ing Town and Coun­try Plan­ning, T&TEC and WASA could have giv­en per­mis­sion to build and pro­vide util­i­ties where there was no ti­tle or own­er­ship. "You know when you ap­ply to WASA and T&TEC, they want to see own­er­ship, they want to see pa­per, they want to see deed, so how did this hap­pen, how did they get ap­proval with­out proof of own­er­ship?" she asked her cheer­ing au­di­ence.

The "dis­ap­pear­ance" of Man­ning's spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er was al­so played out on the po­lit­i­cal plat­form as Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed her im­mi­gra­tion records which showed of nu­mer­ous vis­its to Venezuela, the lat­est be­ing on Feb­ru­ary 6, 2010. Say­ing that they were look­ing for her but could not find her, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had, in­stead, asked Min­is­ter of Plan­ning Mary King to pull the Gua­napo file. "And what that file has re­vealed can on­ly be de­scribed as un­be­liev­able and shock­ing," the PM said. "Would you be­lieve Town and Coun­try ap­proval was not signed? How can you get T&TEC ap­proval but no­body signed the ap­pli­ca­tion?"

She added that most of the ap­pli­ca­tion form were blank, in­clud­ing the por­tion for the ap­pli­cant's name, and the own­er's name. "This scan­dal is so bad," she con­tin­ued, ex­plain­ing that per­mis­sion was ini­tial­ly re­fused be­cause this par­cel of land was clas­si­fied as agri­cul­tur­al. To cir­cum­vent le­gal re­quire­ments, the then Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands grant­ed per­mis­sion on the ba­sis that Pe­na and her or­gan­i­sa­tion sub­mit a pro­pos­al for a com­pre­hen­sive spir­i­tu­al cen­tre, in­clud­ing the ac­tive cul­ti­va­tion of a gar­den and an or­chard. Copies of the thick dossier were hand­ed to mem­bers of the me­dia present at the meet­ing.