Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion (IC) is in­sist­ing that there is no need for Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to be brought be­fore a tri­bunal for his de­c­la­ra­tions on a town­house in In­ez Gate in To­ba­go.

The IC made the state­ment in a writ­ten re­sponse, dat­ed Au­gust 14, to for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan on be­half of his client Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj.

The IC said that it in­ves­ti­gat­ed whether Row­ley know­ing­ly made a false de­c­la­ra­tion when he val­ued his prop­er­ty and found he did not. The dif­fer­ence be­tween the val­ue and the amount Row­ley de­clared was $480,000. It al­so found that the dif­fer­ence does not con­sti­tute a gift or per­son­al ben­e­fit.

It added that the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act (IPLA) does not dis­al­low those sub­ject­ed to the law to re­ceive gifts. It con­tend­ed that when com­pared to the prices paid by oth­ers for hous­es with­in the same de­vel­op­ment, Row­ley, who paid less, did re­ceive a gift but it was not as a re­sult of him be­ing the Prime Min­is­ter.

“The ev­i­dence col­lect­ed by the Com­mis­sion in the course of its in­ves­ti­ga­tion did not sup­port the con­clu­sion that the dis­count pro­vid­ed to Dr Row­ley had any­thing to do with the per­for­mance of his du­ties as Prime Min­is­ter and ac­cord­ing­ly had no ba­sis for con­clud­ing that there had been any breach of Sec­tion 27(1) of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act.”

The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion al­so dis­missed claims that it made these find­ings be­cause of po­lit­i­cal bi­as­es. Re­gard­ing stamp du­ties, it said Row­ley’s at­tor­neys would have dealt with that and it could not de­ter­mine that the Prime Min­is­ter know­ing­ly made false state­ments based off the stamp du­ty dis­crep­an­cy. It said Row­ley did no wrong in stat­ing that the val­ue of the prop­er­ty was what he paid for it as was done on Form A.

“While such val­u­a­tion would cer­tain­ly be known to the at­tor­neys re­spon­si­ble for the reg­is­tra­tion of the deed for the said town­house, the Com­mis­sion had no ev­i­dence in­di­cat­ing that Dr Row­ley ei­ther saw the stamp du­ty and the val­u­a­tion used in mak­ing that as­sess­ment or was made aware of the same,” the let­ter said.

Ram­lo­gan Re­sponds

How­ev­er, Ram­lo­gan is in­sist­ing Row­ley broke the law.

In an­oth­er let­ter to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion on Fri­day, he rub­bished its claim that Row­ley did not act il­le­gal­ly. He said Row­ley must have known that the val­ue of his prop­er­ty was not $1.2 mil­lion as he paid stamp du­ties on said prop­er­ty which was equal to that of a prop­er­ty val­ued at $1.6 mil­lion.

In his ten-page re­sponse to the IC, Ram­lo­gan be­gan say­ing that at­tor­neys act on in­struc­tions and it would have been im­pos­si­ble for Row­ley to not know that the stamp du­ties he paid was for a house val­ued $480,000 more than he de­clared.

He added that the dif­fer­ence be­tween what was paid, and the ac­tu­al val­ue of the house was made known when the Board of In­land Rev­enue had the prop­er­ty as­sessed. Then, when the val­u­a­tion was done, the stamp du­ties rose from $10,000 to $35,000. He said Row­ley would have had to in­struct his at­tor­ney to con­tin­ue with the pur­chase and pay the now in­creased stamp du­ties.

“It would be fool­ish, and an in­sult to the col­lec­tive in­tel­li­gence of the Com­mis­sion for it to bury its head in the sand and say that Mr (Colvin) Blaize (Row­ley’s at­tor­ney) would have sim­ple pro­ceed­ed to reg­is­ter the deed with­out ad­vis­ing his client of this sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment, giv­en the fi­nan­cial im­pli­ca­tions. It is ob­vi­ous that he would have had to ob­tain the rel­e­vant in­struc­tions from his client for pay­ment of the high­er sum be­fore pro­ceed­ing to reg­is­ter this deed. It would be equal­ly stu­pid for the Com­mis­sion to as­sume that Mr Blaize would have paid this mon­ey on be­half of his client with­out knowl­edge or ap­proval,” he said.

Ram­lo­gan added that Row­ley would have re­ceived an in­voice de­tail­ing how much he owed and could not claim ig­no­rance in his de­c­la­ra­tion be­ing close to half a mil­lion less than the ac­tu­al val­ue of the prop­er­ty.

“That would mean that the PM knew the val­ue of his prop­er­ty but know­ing­ly failed to dis­close same in his Form A and hence a strong pri­ma fa­cie case was made out that a crim­i­nal of­fence had been com­mit­ted un­der the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act Chap­ter 22:01 and the mat­ter must be re­ferred to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions for im­me­di­ate ac­tion.”

Ram­lo­gan ar­gued that if it was ac­cept­ed that the PM was un­aware of the ac­tu­al val­ue in 2019 when it was first de­clared, cer­tain­ly that would have changed be­tween 2020 to 2023 af­ter it was raised in the pub­lic do­main He said if the PM con­tin­ued to de­clare the val­ue at $1.2 mil­lion then he broke the law.

Ram­lo­gan con­tend­ed that the IC fail­ing to act against Row­ley, who de­clared his town­house on Form A on­ly, was ab­surd. He said Form B is for pub­lic ac­cess and should car­ry greater weight than Form A which is for the IC to view con­fi­den­tial­ly.

Re­gard­ing the near­ly half a mil­lion-dol­lar dis­count, Ram­lo­gan said the Com­mis­sion should con­sid­er if Row­ley was not Prime Min­is­ter if he would have been giv­en such a dis­count, which it ac­knowl­edged was not grant­ed to oth­ers.

He asked six ques­tions of the Com­mis­sion: Was Blaize in­ter­viewed? Was Al­lan Warn­er the man who sold Row­ley the house in­ter­viewed? Were mem­bers of the Val­u­a­tion Unit at the Board of In­land Rev­enue in­ter­viewed and oth­er mem­bers of staff as­so­ci­at­ed with the pro­cess­ing of the pur­chase? Did it re­quest and re­ceive in­for­ma­tion of pay­ment of the pur­chase price, stamp du­ties and le­gal fees paid to Blaize for the trans­ac­tion and who and how were these monies paid and if not by Row­ley why not?

The town­house mat­ter (put in box)

The is­sue of Row­ley’s de­c­la­ra­tion to the IC was first raised in 2021 by Op­po­si­tion MP Sad­dam Ho­sein. It was reignit­ed lead­ing up to the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions. Ho­sein claimed that Row­ley de­clared the prop­er­ty on Form A of his de­c­la­ra­tion and not Form B.

In re­sponse, Row­ley said the form did not re­quire him to do so and while the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion sug­gest­ed that the law be changed to amend that, un­til such time, he broke no law. He even went fur­ther to chas­tise the IC at a me­dia con­fer­ence on Au­gust 9 for fail­ing to dead the is­sue when it was first raised.

Ram­lo­gan, how­ev­er, raised a dif­fer­ent is­sue, on the same top­ic, that be­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter would have made a false de­c­la­ra­tion to the IC by know­ing­ly pay­ing or caus­ing to be paid stamp du­ties for a prop­er­ty val­ued more than what he de­clared it to be val­ued. The dif­fer­ence be­tween the cost and val­ue of the prop­er­ty, Ram­lo­gan con­tend­ed, should be con­sid­ered as a gift, which Row­ley did not de­clare and was al­so in breach of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act.

While the Prime Min­is­ter was call­ing on the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to clear his name, Ram­lo­gan was writ­ing to them for the closed in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be re­opened with new com­plaints. At the be­gin­ning of the month the IC wrote to Row­ley telling him that the mat­ter was closed.

Ram­lo­gan, in his let­ter to the Com­mis­sion, asked whether Row­ley de­lib­er­ate­ly un­der­val­ued his town­house to de­fraud the Board of In­land Rev­enue by pay­ing less stamp du­ty; whether he would have re­ceived a dis­count on the prop­er­ty by a par­ty fi­nancier had he not been the Prime Min­is­ter and that he “patent­ly failed to main­tain pub­lic con­fi­dence and trust.”

On Au­gust 3, Ram­lo­gan, on be­half of his client, ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj, wrote to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in­form­ing it of his in­ten­tion to seek ju­di­cial re­view af­ter it dis­con­tin­ued an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Row­ley.