Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

?The ghost of for­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) In­dus­try Min­is­ter John "cock­fight­ing" "John­ny" O'Hal­lo­ran has come back to haunt the par­ty al­most 25 years af­ter he has died. Just when the pop­u­la­tion thought the PNM got their house in or­der af­ter what could be de­scribed as one of the biggest "mon­ey" scan­dals in the 70s to rock the par­ty un­der Dr Er­ic Williams–fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety in­volv­ing O'Hal­lo­ran, now de­ceased–the par­ty has found it­self in the cen­tre of con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing an­oth­er "John," this time John Calder Hart. Though not car­ry­ing a min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio, the for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott), Hart was said to be wield­ing more pow­er than a Cab­i­net min­is­ter in the Patrick Man­ning-led gov­ern­ment. Iron­i­cal­ly, both men shared the same first name and were both close­ly af­fil­i­at­ed with the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion be­fore grab­bing the at­ten­tion of the pub­lic and all me­dia head­lines fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, both men were al­so im­mor­talised in song by two ca­lyp­so­ni­ans.

In his pop­u­lar Pana­ma ren­di­tion, David Rud­der sang O'Hal­lo­ran's tune:

"I, I, I, I go­ing to Pana­ma. I got to go Pana­ma ma­ma. What it is they got over there mak­ing Tri­nis just don't care. Some say that gone with a thou­sand, some say that it's tens of thou­sands, I hear they men­tion one mil­lion, I hear they men­tion one bil­lion." The pop­u­lar Dr Hol­lis "Chalk­dust" Liv­er­pool won his eighth Ca­lyp­so Monarch ti­tle with his My Hart And I, as he wade in­to Hart's in­dis­cre­tions and the au­thor­i­ties staunch sup­port for him.

"Don't touch my heart ba­by, Don't touch my heart." How­ev­er, sep­a­rat­ing them is the bribery charges that was lev­elled against O'Hal­lo­ran in 1983, a mere two years be­fore he fled to Cana­da and died. High priest of bobol

O'Hal­lo­ran was the own­er of ex­ten­sive cit­rus es­tates and man­ag­er of the Trinidad Lime Fac­to­ry. It was un­der the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion that a quan­ti­ty of mon­ey was re­cov­ered and a large build­ing was seized in Cana­da fol­low­ing his death.

Hart, to date, has had no crim­i­nal charges brought against him, but has ap­peared be­fore a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry set up to in­ves­ti­gate the op­er­a­tions in­to Ude­cott and the con­struc­tion sec­tor. Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard has since in­struct­ed Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert to start in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to al­le­ga­tions against Hart. Con­trary to Hart's tes­ti­mo­ny un­der oath, doc­u­ments ob­tained by the Con­gress of the Peo­ple al­leged he had fam­i­ly links to Sun­way Con­struc­tion, which was hired to con­struct the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­er in Port-of-Spain. Even politi­cians re­fer­ring to Ude­cott can­not seem to ut­ter their con­tri­bu­tions with­out men­tion­ing O'Hal­lo­ran's name. It was dur­ing the de­bate on the Val­i­da­tion and Im­mu­ni­ty from Pro­ceed­ings Bill 2009, St Au­gus­tine MP Vas­ant Ba­harath re­ferred to O'Hal­lo­ran as the "the high priest of bobol in the PNM." O'Hal­lo­ran's ghost seems to be stalk­ing the land with the re­cent al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion sur­round­ing Ude­cott and Hart.

'He nev­er hes­i­tat­ed to help any­body'

Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed the home town of O'Hal­lo­ran on Flam­boy­ant Av­enue West, Diego Mar­tin last week and spoke to some of his close friends. While many smiled when his name was men­tioned and re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, oth­ers spoke of man who was open hand­ed with mon­ey. The house he used to live in is now ren­o­vat­ed and owned by re­tired nurse, Bernadette Horne. Re­fer­ring to O'Hal­lo­ran as "a good chap," El­der Fran­cis Gon­za­les said, "De­spite of every­thing that was said about him he was a good man. He loved his cock­fight­ing and nev­er hes­i­tate to help any­body. Why he went Cana­da and built build­ings sim­i­lar to One Wood­brook Place, I do not know. Why he got caught up, I re­al­ly can­not say..." An­oth­er res­i­dent, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty,? said, "All I know he went Pana­ma with our mon­ey; I do not know the amount, but he went Pana­ma."

An­oth­er neigh­bour, who al­so re­quest­ed his name not be used, said O'Hal­lo­ran al­ways as­sist­ed peo­ple. "I do not know much of his se­cret life. All I know, be­fore noon every day peo­ple used to line up at the front of his house look­ing for help from John­ny and he nev­er use to turn away any­one. "John­ny was a nice man and he use to help every­body who was de­serv­ing of help," the neig­bour added. Res­i­dents in the Heights of Aripo, where O'Hal­lo­ran owned his farm, al­so echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments. His long­time cock­fight­ing friend, Se­bastien Thomp­son said he was not sur­prised by the sim­i­lar­i­ty be­tween both men. "Trinidad is a stock­pile for bobol. John­ny was a good man but he had a sec­ond life I did not know about. To me, he was a very good chap. Loved cock­fight­ing and loved to hunt. "If I was to com­pare him to the present sit­u­a­tion, what he fled with was a drop in the ice buck­et. He dead and gone but this type of cor­rup­tion has to stop. Gov­ern­ment com­ing and gov­ern­ment go­ing and no­body do­ing any­thing to stop the cor­rup­tion."

Gas sta­tion rack­et

An­oth­er ma­jor cor­rup­tion scan­dal un­der the PNM was the in­fa­mous "Gas Sta­tion rack­et," which in­volved civ­il ser­vant Jean Miles. Miles, who worked in the civ­il ser­vant in the 1960s, im­pli­cat­ed the Min­istry of Pe­tro­le­um, Mines, In­dus­try and Com­merce in wrong­do­ing in re­gard to the al­lo­ca­tion of gaso­line sta­tions to busi­ness­men who were leas­ing them from the Gov­ern­ment. She caused a sen­sa­tion by al­leg­ing cor­rupt prac­tices by sev­er­al high-rank­ing fig­ures. And then an­oth­er shake up for the PNM came when for­mer PNM par­ty chair­man and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Fran­cis Pre­vatt was named as the per­son who di­rect­ed Robert Baird, the MC Don­nell-Dou­glas Cor­po­ra­tion Of­fi­cial re­spon­si­ble for the sale of three DC-9 air­craft to now de­funct British West In­dies In­ter­na­tion­al Air­ways, to meet with O'Hal­lo­ran who lat­er re­quest­ed 'a com­mis­sion' of US$250,000 from an air­craft com­pa­ny. Sev­er­al years lat­er, PNM coun­cil­lor Dhansam Dhan­sook raised al­le­ga­tions of bribery al­le­ga­tions against for­mer Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Franklin Khan who is be­fore the court charged with six counts of cor­rup­tion. En­er­gy Min­is­ter Er­ic Williams, who was al­so charged with bribery, was lat­er freed.

Pi­ar­co scan­dal un­der UNC

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress al­so saw them­selves be­ing vot­ed out of of­fice by the pop­u­la­tion with the Pi­ar­co Air­port scan­dal, in­volv­ing mil­lions, hang­ing over their heads. This scan­dal saw for­mer Prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, his wife Oma, min­is­ters and busi­ness­men be­ing charged with al­leged cor­rup­tion. They are all still be­fore the court.

Cor­rup­tion charges

?Bri­an Kuei Tung

1. For­mer Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung is be­fore the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court charged with 16 counts of cor­rup­tion to­talling to $1.6 bil­lion.

2. The charged al­leged­ly stemmed from the sec­ond phase of po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the Pi­ar­co Air­port de­vel­op­ment project.

3. He is joint­ly charged with his girl­friend and busi­ness­woman Re­nee Pierre, for­mer Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty chair­men Ty­rone Gopee and Ameer Edoo and for­mer Nipdec chair­man Ed­ward Bay­ley.

Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh

1. Fraud­u­lent­ly re­ceived US$318,000.

2. Fraud­u­lent­ly re­ceived US$2.1 mil­lion.

3. Gal­barans­ingh is al­so joint­ly charged with busi­ness­men Steve Fer­gu­son and Am­rith Ma­haraj for the al­leged re­ceipt of US$2.1 mil­lion by fraud­u­lent means and con­spir­a­cy to ob­tain con­tracts val­ued $1.6 b

Car­los John

1. Dis­miss­es al­le­ga­tions of a $52mil­lion bank ac­count.

2. John is de­feat­ed by Tu­na­puna MP Ed­die Hart in the Oc­to­ber 2002 gen­er­al elec­tions.

Bas­deo Pan­day

Pan­day and his wife Oma are charged with cor­rupt­ly re­ceiv­ing 25,000 pounds Ster­ling. Gal­barans­ingh and John were charged with cor­rupt­ly giv­ing the mon­ey to the Pan­day's as an in­duce­ment or re­ward.