Fran­cis Joseph

A for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion for fail­ing to de­clare sev­er­al bank ac­counts to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion for the year 2007, in ac­cor­dance with the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act, 2000. CNC3 first re­port­ed last night, two of the ac­counts were in a Trinidad bank, and the oth­ers were in a bank in the Grand Cay­man Is­lands. The Trinidad ac­count had a bal­ance of $167,445 and was in the name of the wife of the for­mer min­is­ter. There are sav­ing and trust ac­counts in Alexan­dria Ban­corp Lim­it­ed (Cay­man Is­lands) with a bal­ance of US $6,544,322 (TT $40 mil­lion). The wife has been de­scribed as the "ben­e­fi­cial own­er," while the for­mer min­is­ter was de­scribed as a sig­na­to­ry–mean­ing he has the au­thor­i­ty to de­posit and with­draw funds. The Cay­man Is­lands ac­counts were opened on Ju­ly 7, 2007, but it is not cer­tain whether it was ful­ly-fund­ed on the very first day. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning is aware of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­ing con­duct­ed by the po­lice af­ter the in­for­ma­tion was re­ceived fol­low­ing a foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the for­mer min­is­ter's af­fairs.

There is no In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion at the mo­ment to sanc­tion the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, but as soon as the new com­mis­sion is sworn in on Mon­day by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards, the file will be placed be­fore the new mem­bers for ap­proval. The T&T Guardian learnt yes­ter­day that charges were ex­pect­ed to be laid against the for­mer min­is­ter and his wife with­in the next two weeks. Ac­cord­ing to the foren­sic au­dit, in the last six months, there have been 19 in-bound trans­fers or de­posits to the Cay­man Is­lands ac­counts. Fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that the wife pur­chased a num­ber of cer­tifi­cates of de­posits. The to­tal list­ed was sev­en, and the de­posits were in all US$50,000 or US$100,000 de­nom­i­na­tions. If this ex-min­is­ter is charged, he would be­come the third un­der the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act to be tak­en be­fore the courts. For­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day was charged in Sep­tem­ber 2002 for know­ing­ly fail­ing to de­clare his Natwest Lon­don bank ac­count to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion for the years 1997, 1998 and 1999. The oth­er for­mer min­is­ter to be charged was for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Fin­bar Gan­gar.