Gail Alexan­der

The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion will to­mor­row dis­cuss UNC MP Sad­dam Ho­sein’s al­le­ga­tion that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­leged­ly failed to file a de­c­la­ra­tion with the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion on the pur­chase of a To­ba­go town­house in 2019.

This was con­firmed by the com­mis­sion yes­ter­day. The T&T Guardian was in­formed that the mat­ter had “def­i­nite­ly” been added to the com­mis­sion’s agen­da for its nor­mal meet­ing to­mor­row. How­ev­er, the mat­ter hadn’t been be­fore the com­mis­sion, it was con­firmed.

Ho­sein spoke on the is­sue at Mon­day’s UNC Vir­tu­al Fo­rum. He de­tailed the “files” which the UNC had on Row­ley, To­ba­go busi­ness­man Al­lan Warn­er and oth­ers.

Ho­sein had called on Row­ley to clear the air on al­le­ga­tions that the PM didn’t de­clare the al­leged pur­chase of a town­house from In­ez De­vel­op­ments on Shir­van Road, To­ba­go, in 2019. He said as of last week, checks by the UNC re­vealed the PM failed to de­clare he bought the prop­er­ty, which was in vi­o­la­tion of the law. Ho­sein cit­ed a deed of Feb­ru­ary 21, 2019 and al­so al­leged that from deeds in the UNC’s pos­ses­sion, Row­ley “got a dis­count” of .$5 mil­lion, pay­ing $1.2 mil­lion. He claimed oth­er peo­ple bought units for be­tween $1.6m and $1.8m.

He cit­ed Sec­tion 27 of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act which says, “Where a per­son­al ben­e­fit ex­ceeds $5,000 in val­ue, the per­son in pub­lic life shall file his de­c­la­ra­tion in­di­cat­ing the na­ture of the gift, source and cir­cum­stances un­der which it was giv­en or ac­cept­ed.” Ho­sein called for ur­gent ac­tion by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.

The T&T Guardian sent queries via What’s App to Row­ley on if he filed the de­c­la­ra­tion for the prop­er­ty, if he bought it and if the de­c­la­ra­tion wasn’t filed, why not and when it will be filed.

On Ho­sein’s claims, Row­ley re­spond­ed, “I will ig­nore that runt un­til he slan­ders me. Then I will sue him. Un­til then, I will ask you to lend him a dic­tio­nary so that he can learn the dif­fer­ence be­tween PNM and UNC. PNM - we pur­chase. UNC - they steal. In one case, tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey through kick­backs from con­tracts is in­volved. In the oth­er, the mon­ey comes from per­son­al ac­counts. He is hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty with that. Poor fel­low.”

Row­ley al­so told oth­er me­dia hous­es he didn’t re­spond to UNC “des­per­a­tion.” He warned that if they reached the thresh­old of slan­der, he wouldn’t hes­i­tate to sue the of­fend­er. He said they were seek­ing com­pa­ny to “match the record of cor­rup­tion with con­trac­tors and gov­ern­ment mon­ey ... so now they’re rul­ing on le­git­i­mate pri­vate trans­ac­tions ... they’re wel­come to waste their time be­cause un­like them, I spend my mon­ey on what I pur­chase and don’t need their per­mis­sion.’’

In a state­ment last evening in re­sponse to Row­ley’s claims, Ho­sein said, “Kei­th Row­ley’s flip­pant an­swer to the me­dia is un­ac­cept­able. He has yet to re­spond to whether or not he de­clared the town­house to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and he failed to ex­plain the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing a half of mil­lion-dol­lar dis­count of the town­house.”

He added, “The Prime Min­is­ter must ex­plain why on­ly the Row­leys were lucky enough to pur­chase In­ez Gate town­hous­es at $1.2 mil­lion when oth­ers paid $1.6 mil­lion and up­wards for theirs. These units were ad­ver­tised for sale of $1.75 mil­lion on In­ez In­vest­ment’s web­site.”

Ho­sein claimed the mat­ters fall not on­ly un­der the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion’s re­mit “but al­so fall un­der the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit, in re­la­tion to com­pli­ance with an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing reg­u­la­tions and sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions.”

“These are mat­ters that war­rant full com­pre­hen­sive re­sponse...Prime Min­is­ter come clean with the pop­u­la­tion, or we’ll take the nec­es­sary ac­tion,’’ Ho­sein added.