Fran­cis Joseph

The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion has be­gun a probe in­to the con­tents of the con­tro­ver­sial af­fi­davit sworn by Ja­maat al Mus­limeen leader, Yasin Abu Bakr, and filed in court pro­ceed­ings in 2006. This is the sec­ond such in­ves­ti­ga­tion, as the po­lice are con­duct­ing a sim­i­lar in­quiry in­to the con­tents, in which Bakr al­leged that he made a deal with then Prime Min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning, in ex­change for Ja­maat sup­port in the mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies in the run-up to the 2002 gen­er­al elec­tion.

The deal, ac­cord­ing to Bakr, in­clud­ed fi­nan­cial gain to the Ja­maat for work­ing in the mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies, fund­ing for the Ja­maat school at Mu­cu­rapo, and ac­qui­si­tion of state lands for the Ja­maat to oc­cu­py. Copies of cheques paid to the Ja­maat were hand­ed over to the com­mis­sion yes­ter­day, the T&T Guardian learnt. While Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard has been press­ing the po­lice in­to ac­tion, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion has qui­et­ly be­gan its own in­ves­ti­ga­tion, to de­ter­mine if there were breach­es of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act, 2000. At the in­vi­ta­tion of the com­mis­sion, Bakr turned up at the of­fices at UTC Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, armed with a writ­ten state­ment, out­lin­ing de­tails of the al­leged deal he made with Man­ning in 2002. Af­ter spend­ing some 35 min­utes at the com­mis­sion's of­fices, Bakr emerged with one of his sup­port­ers and de­clined com­ment on his vis­it.

The Guardian was in­formed that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was ini­ti­at­ed in ac­cor­dance with Sec­tions 33 and 34 of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act. Bakr filed the af­fi­davit in 2006 as his de­fence to a sum­mons for sale mo­tion brought by then At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, John Je­re­mie.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al filed the sum­mons, seek­ing per­mis­sion from the Port-of-Spain High Court, to sell 11 prop­er­ties to off­set a debt for the de­struc­tion of Po­lice Head­quar­ters and dam­age to the Red House, dur­ing the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup. Jus­tice Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine ad­mit­ted Bakr's af­fi­davit in­to ev­i­dence, but the AG ap­pealed. The Court of Ap­peal eject­ed the af­fi­davit from the case. Bakr went to the Privy Coun­cil, and on May 5, 2009, the Law Lords dis­missed the ap­peal, but ex­pressed reser­va­tions at the con­tents of the af­fi­davit.

Lord Car­swell said if the con­tents were true, that pri­vate arrange­ment be­tween Man­ning and Bakr was cor­rupt with­in the mean­ing...of Sec­tion 3 (of the Pre­ven­tion of Cor­rup­tion Act 1987) and "each par­ty to the agree­ment was act­ing in con­tra­ven­tion of the sec­tion." "If the Prime Min­is­ter made an agree­ment on the lines al­leged in the af­fi­davit, it could not have been made on be­half of the State," Car­swell said. "The essence of the agree­ment be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and Mr Abu Bakr on be­half of the Ja­maat was that cer­tain ad­van­tages would be giv­en to the Ja­maat out of state prop­er­ty, in re­turn for se­cur­ing vot­ing sup­port for the Prime Min­is­ter's po­lit­i­cal par­ty." The lo­cal Court of Ap­peal held that the agree­ment was il­le­gal at com­mon law. Car­swell held that the agree­ment was il­le­gal from its in­cep­tion.

The case against the Mus­limeen leader be­gan in 1994 when the State be­gan pro­ceed­ings against him and 113 mem­bers of the Ja­maat for burn­ing down Po­lice Head­quar­ters and dam­ag­ing the Red House, dur­ing the at­tempt­ed coup in Ju­ly 1990. On Sep­tem­ber 6, 1996, the State ob­tained judg­ment against Bakr and the Ja­maat and on Oc­to­ber 15, 2001, Jus­tice Joseph Tam as­sessed judg­ment in the sum of $15 mil­lion with in­ter­est. The oblig­a­tion climbed to $32 mil­lion in 2006. How­ev­er, when the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is­sued a sum­mons de­mand­ing the sale of 11 prop­er­ties in an ef­fort to sat­is­fy the judg­ment, Bakr swore to an af­fi­davit that he and Man­ning had met sev­er­al times and agreed that the State would not en­force the judg­ment to re­cov­er the mon­ey. Bakr claimed that there was a clear un­der­stand­ing with Man­ning that he, Bakr, would mo­bilise young peo­ple to vote for the PNM in mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies in 2002. He said the meet­ings with the Prime Min­is­ter al­so agreed on the need for Bakr to as­sist in curb­ing the in­crease in crime in cer­tain ar­eas. Bakr claimed he pre­sent­ed Man­ning with a list of what the Ja­maat want­ed in ex­change for as­sist­ing the gov­ern­ing par­ty and the Gov­ern­ment.