Richard Lord

It's fright­en­ing. That's how Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the dis­cov­ery of il­le­gal phone-tap­ping by the Strate­gic In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA), a unit with­in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry. She spoke about the dis­cov­ery dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on her re­turn to T&T from the Unit­ed States yes­ter­day. Per­sad-Bisses­sar is ex­pect­ed to tell all in a com­pre­hen­sive min­is­te­r­i­al state­ment in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives this af­ter­noon. The T&T Guardian re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly on No­vem­ber 2 that a high-lev­el po­lice probe was be­ing car­ried out in­to the op­er­a­tions of the SIA.

Yes­ter­day, the PM in­sist­ed the tap­ping could not have been in­tend­ed to as­sist in the fight against crime be­cause the phones be­longed to cit­i­zens who had no crime record or who had no propen­si­ty for en­gag­ing in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. "We're talk­ing here of Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment of all the par­ties, we're talk­ing here of per­sons in pri­vate life, in­clud­ing me­dia per­son­nel, we're talk­ing here about per­sons in the ju­di­cia­ry," she said. The PM want­ed to know what the in­for­ma­tion was be­ing used for. She said the act con­tin­ued af­ter the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion, which saw her Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment com­ing to pow­er in T&T. She said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was done by the po­lice un­der Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs. "We are re­al­ly grate­ful for the work done un­der Com­mis­sion­er Gibbs," she said. "It al­so in­volves the dis­cov­ery of large amounts of cash at this agency (SIA).

"The com­mis­sion­er has re­quest­ed that there be a foren­sic au­dit car­ried out in­to the dis­cov­ery." She said leg­is­la­tion seek­ing to deal with the is­sue of wire-tap­ping is to be brought to Par­lia­ment to­day. "It's a fright­en­ing bit of in­for­ma­tion that we dis­cov­ered on­ly by chance," she added. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was ad­vised of this about two weeks ago. She said the tap­ping of phones was il­le­gal. The PM, who is al­so the chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil said: "This was nev­er brought to our at­ten­tion." She lat­er said she had no in­for­ma­tion to sup­port claims that any oth­er agency with­in the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry was en­gaged in phone-tap­ping.