by Samp­son Nan­ton

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has dis­closed the re­al rea­son he fired for­mer Sport Min­is­ter Dar­ryl Smith, say­ing it had noth­ing to do with sex­u­al ha­rass­ment but be­cause Smith in­ter­fered with the prop­er process of the Pub­lic Ser­vice, re­sult­ing in a fi­nan­cial cost to tax­pay­ers.

The prime min­is­ter made the dis­clo­sure as he ad­dressed a pub­lic meet­ing in sup­port of the PNM's San Juan/Barataria gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­date, Ja­son Williams on Tues­day night.

Smith was fired in April 2018.

At the time of the dis­missal, there were re­ports of sex­u­al mis­con­duct in of­fice and a sub­se­quent pay­ment of $150,000 made to the al­leged vic­tim Car­rie-Ann More­au, to­geth­er with a Non-Dis­clo­sure Agree­ment that blocked any de­tails from pub­lic scruti­ny.

How­ev­er, Dr Row­ley said Tues­day that no com­plaint of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment came be­fore him.

"In my in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the Dar­ryl Smith sit­u­a­tion there was no com­plaint be­fore me and no doc­u­ment be­fore me that had any­thing to do with sex­u­al ha­rass­ment. I com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the lawyer and he con­firmed there was no com­plaint in there about sex­u­al ha­rass­ment," the prime min­is­ter said.

He told the meet­ing that while prime min­is­ters were not ob­lig­at­ed to say why they hire and fire min­is­ters, he want­ed to state why Smith was dis­missed.

"I fired Dar­ryl Smith for in­ter­fer­ing im­prop­er­ly in the Pub­lic Ser­vice. He did not want to con­tin­ue hir­ing the woman be­cause, for rea­sons giv­en to the PS (Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary) she was un­sat­is­fac­to­ry in her job. The PS would have been told that and the PS pre­pared a dis­missal let­ter," he stat­ed.

He con­tin­ued: "When he did that and the PS put the let­ter of dis­missal and put the com­plaints by the min­is­ter - a let­ter now ex­ists about the per­son's un­sat­is­fac­to­ry per­for­mance and in­com­pe­tence - he then went to the PS and say, 'You can't do that...take out the cause be­cause if she's go­ing to get an­oth­er job, that would act against that', and the PS did that."

The prime min­is­ter said those ac­tions led to an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions case to be made against the Min­istry.

"The PS took that in­struc­tion from the Min­is­ter and re­moved the 'cause for dis­missal' and vi­o­lat­ed the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions un­der­stand­ing. You can't fire some­body and not say what the cause is," Dr Row­ley said.

He said the PS ex­posed the tax­pay­er be­cause it was an easy case for the union to take to the In­dus­tri­al Court and the gov­ern­ment even­tu­al­ly had to pay.

"The Min­istry paid for the dis­missal," he said, adding, "There was no pay­ment for sex­u­al ha­rass­ment."

Dr Row­ley said that af­ter the dis­missal, there was spec­u­la­tion about the re­al rea­son, with some peo­ple even say­ing that the prime min­is­ter was to blame for the con­tro­ver­sy.

He told the meet­ing that this was one of on­ly two "scan­dals" of his Gov­ern­ment, the oth­er be­ing a high roam­ing bill run up by then Tourism Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe in 2017.

The bill ex­ceed­ed $59,000 ac­crued over a four-day pe­ri­od while she was at­tend­ing the Caribbean Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s Caribbean Trav­el Mar­ket­place in the Ba­hamas.

She had told the Par­lia­ment that it was done in er­ror be­cause she had failed to turn off the roam­ing fea­ture on her phone.

State­ment by PM's Of­fice on April 10, 2018 re Smith's dis­missal

When the prime min­is­ter dis­missed Smith in April 2018, the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter is­sued the fol­low­ing state­ment:

"To­day, (April 10, 2018) Prime Min­is­ter Dr the Ho­n­ourable Kei­th Row­ley ad­vised Her Ex­cel­len­cy Paula-Mae Weekes, Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go in keep­ing with the pro­vi­sion of Sec­tion 3(9) of the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, to re­voke the ap­point­ment of Mr Dar­ryl Smith as Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment.

This fol­low­ing a meet­ing be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, the Ho­n­ourable Camille Robin­son-Reg­is and Mr Smith dur­ing which new in­for­ma­tion came to the at­ten­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter.

The meet­ing al­so re­sult­ed in the ap­point­ment of a com­mit­tee to thor­ough­ly re­view the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the dis­missal and pay­ment of com­pen­sa­tion to Ms Car­rie-Ann More­au at the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs.

The com­mit­tee is to be chaired by for­mer Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary and Hu­man Re­source Ex­pert Ms Jack­ie Wil­son, and in­cludes Ms Fo­lade Mu­to­ta of WINAD and At­tor­ney-at-Law Ms Elaine Greene. The com­mit­tee is ex­pect­ed to re­port in two weeks.

It is an­tic­i­pat­ed that all par­ties in­volved in any non-dis­clo­sure arrange­ment in this mat­ter will lift such im­ped­i­ment so as to al­low the fullest ex­am­i­na­tion of the facts for the ben­e­fit of the pub­lic."

What hap­pened next

The re­port sub­mit­ted by the com­mit­tee was deemed "un­us­able" by both the prime min­is­ter and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al Rawi.

In Par­lia­ment on De­cem­ber 10, 2019, Dr Row­ley main­tained that the mat­ter in­volv­ing Smith had end­ed.

Row­ley point­ed to the in­abil­i­ty to use a re­port from the in­ves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee and said that he had done the “ul­ti­mate” and fired Smith from the gov­ern­ment.

Al­so in De­cem­ber 2019, for­mer tem­po­rary sen­a­tor Fo­lade Mu­to­ta, one of three women who in­ves­ti­gat­ed Smith, broke months of si­lence via a scathing two-page let­ter in which she con­demned what she de­scribed as the “boys club” men­tal­i­ty which kept women silent in the face of in­ap­pro­pri­ate and un­want­ed sex­u­al con­duct.

In her first pub­lic state­ment since the re­port which Mu­to­ta and two oth­er women pro­duced was deemed “un­us­able” by both men, Mu­to­ta said, “the con­duct of the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter and Ho­n­ourable At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has been shame­ful, rep­re­hen­si­ble, misog­y­nis­tic, and an at­tack on women’s agency and women’s right to chal­lenge in­jus­tice and to be heard.”

Days af­ter, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar called for an ur­gent and im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the facts and cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing what she deemed as "the al­leged se­cret set­tle­ment of the sex­u­al ha­rass­ment law­suit brought against for­mer Min­is­ter of Sport Mr. Dar­ryl Smith, with the pay­ment of $150,000 from pub­lic funds."

The Op­po­si­tion Leader wrote to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and the Chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, stat­ing that there are “strong grounds for sus­pect­ing that sev­er­al crim­i­nal of­fences may have been com­mit­ted as well as the pos­si­ble breach of sev­er­al pro­vi­sions of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act and the Code of Con­duct”.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the re­port raised an un­de­ni­able pri­ma fa­cie case for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the com­mis­sion of sev­er­al very se­ri­ous crim­i­nal of­fences, in­clud­ing con­spir­a­cy to per­vert the course of pub­lic jus­tice, mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, and a breach of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act Chap­ter 22:01 by sev­er­al per­sons, in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Smith, and the then Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs.

In Feb­ru­ary 2020, po­lice con­firmed that As­sis­tant Supt Ju­ri of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau was con­duct­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a re­port of "al­leged cor­rup­tion" in the Smith mat­ter.

Po­lice said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion did not specif­i­cal­ly in­volve Smith but all pub­lic ser­vants at the Sport Min­istry who were in­volved in the mat­ter.