Gail Alexan­der

For­mer UNC stal­wart Dr De­vant Ma­haraj says he’s ful­ly pre­pared to give the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) a state­ment on al­leged pros­ti­tu­tion and hu­man traf­fick­ing which he claims oc­curred dur­ing the PP gov­ern­ment’s 2010-15 term. This comes af­ter UNC deputy leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal yes­ter­day chal­lenged him to do so with­in 48 hours dur­ing an in­ter­view on I95FM yes­ter­day.

Con­tact­ed last evening by Guardian Me­dia, Ma­haraj said, “I’m not back­ing down...”

The war of words be­tween the for­mer UNC col­leagues ig­nit­ed af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, an­swered UNC MP Rod­ney Charles’ queries on the 2022 US Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Re­port.

Charles said T&T re­mained on the US Tier Two watch­list in part “be­cause it didn’t take ac­tion against se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials al­leged in 2020 to be in­volved in hu­man traf­fick­ing.”

How­ev­er, Row­ley re­spond­ed, “We did hear that al­le­ga­tion and when we in­ves­ti­gat­ed, we dis­cov­ered it was re­fer­ring to cur­rent mem­bers of Par­lia­ment—none of which is on the Gov­ern­ment side.”

Yes­ter­day, UNC Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al and Charles ques­tioned Row­ley’s state­ments on an “in­ves­ti­ga­tion” and for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith al­so spoke on the mat­ter.

How­ev­er, Ma­haraj and Mooni­lal be­came em­broiled in a “war” af­ter Ma­haraj last week­end con­firmed Row­ley’s claim. Ma­haraj al­leged “par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­u­als who now hold high of­fice in the UNC reg­u­lar­ly sup­plied Venezue­lan and Colom­bian pros­ti­tutes to peo­ple in and out of the UNC” and se­nior UNC of­fi­cials—in­clud­ing him­self—in­ves­ti­gat­ed hu­man traf­fick­ing al­le­ga­tions.

Mooni­lal de­nied this dur­ing the UNC’s me­dia con­fer­ence on Sun­day.

But yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj, via state­ment, said in 2012, ques­tions on pros­ti­tu­tion and traf­fick­ing were raised by an in­ves­tiga­tive re­porter to top UNC of­fi­cials. He cit­ed the ques­tion, which per­tained to al­le­ga­tions con­cern­ing some for­eign women.

Cer­tain oth­er mem­bers of the PP Cab­i­net yes­ter­day con­firmed they’d heard al­le­ga­tions of un­eth­i­cal prac­tices by some peo­ple but said no ev­i­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate this was ever pre­sent­ed.

Yes­ter­day on I95, Mooni­lal said Ma­haraj raised a mat­ter of 12 years ago to which “no one, in­clud­ing my­self, has any rec­ol­lec­tion of any in­ves­ti­ga­tion and I’m not com­pe­tent to in­ves­ti­gate hu­man traf­fick­ing. That’s a mat­ter for TTPS and law en­force­ment.”

“I’ve nev­er in­ves­ti­gat­ed or been part of any in­ves­ti­ga­tion of hu­man traf­fick­ing—that’s just a mon­strous lie, he’s of­fer­ing no ev­i­dence ... I in­tend to speak to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and ask whether or not she’s pre­pared to send a po­lice of­fi­cer to Cana­da or to con­tact Mr Ma­haraj so he can give a full state­ment to the po­lice if he has any ev­i­dence of any wrong­do­ing by UNC of­fi­cials or any­body...”

On whether any­thing like this oc­curred in the UNC, Mooni­lal said, “There can be no crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty oc­cur­ring and if any­one is aware of that, you have a du­ty un­der the law to com­mu­ni­cate with any arm of law en­force­ment to deal with it.”

He said if Ma­haraj or any­one had ev­i­dence of this, they could take it to the po­lice.

Mooni­lal said he was at­tend­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Christo­pher-Hare­wood yes­ter­day and in­tend­ed to “...call on her to con­tact Ma­haraj ur­gent­ly, get a state­ment and in­ves­ti­gate if he has any au­then­tic ev­i­dence to clear his name...”

“I ex­pect him in 48 hours to give a state­ment to the CoP, oth­er­wise you might as well shut up as you have no ev­i­dence—you’re not even pre­pared to make a state­ment to the po­lice on such a se­ri­ous mat­ter!”

Mooni­lal claimed Row­ley and Ma­haraj are now a “tag team in­volved in mau­vais langue and ku­choor.”

On Row­ley’s claim that Per­sad-Bisses­sar el­e­vat­ed some­one in­volved in hu­man traf­fick­ing to the po­si­tion of MP, Mooni­lal chal­lenged Row­ley to call the per­son’s name in pub­lic.

Ma­haraj, re­spond­ing to Mooni­lal’s chal­lenge, told the T&T Guardian, “It’s pel­lu­cid­ly clear Dr Mooni­lal isn’t in­ter­est­ed in the truth and has se­lec­tive am­ne­sia, be­ing ful­ly colonised as he is in the hem­line pol­i­tics of UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as he as­pires to lead­er­ship.

“If and when the TTPS reach­es out to me, I’m will­ing to en­ter­tain what­ev­er method­ol­o­gy or medi­um via which they want to get a state­ment. I’m not back­ing down.”

Gary: TTPS didn’t in­ves­ti­gate US re­port

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says when he was CoP, no re­port con­cern­ing al­le­ga­tions aris­ing out of a US Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Re­port came to his desk “where any side of the Par­lia­men­tary bench­es was con­cerned.”

“When I hear peo­ple say­ing ‘we in­ves­ti­gat­ed’, one has to re­call the TTPS is the on­ly body with in­ves­tiga­tive au­thor­i­ty and TTPS wasn’t in any such in­ves­ti­ga­tion. It again gives you an idea of how much politi­cians try to lead in­ves­ti­ga­tions.”

Ques­tions to a front­line Min­is­ter on the is­sue of who did the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, fur­ther de­tails and if this meshed with what for­mer UNC mem­ber Dr De­vant Ma­haraj has claimed, re­ceived no re­ply yes­ter­day.

UNC’s Jyan­ti Lutch­me­di­al said, “Who did the in­ves­ti­ga­tions that’s be­ing re­ferred to as ‘we’ did it. Did the Gov­ern­ment do it them­selves and de­ter­mined the US State De­part­ment didn’t know the dif­fer­ence be­tween a gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial and a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment and Op­po­si­tion MP.

“I’d like to know how an Op­po­si­tion Par­lia­men­tar­i­an could pos­si­bly im­pede a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion when law en­force­ment doesn’t re­port to the Op­po­si­tion, which doesn’t have the pow­er to in­ter­act with them the way the Gov­ern­ment has. High­est rank­ing mem­bers of the law en­force­ment com­mu­ni­ty re­port to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil chaired by the PM and oth­er Gov­ern­ment mem­bers.”

Lutch­me­di­al felt more in­for­ma­tion should have been giv­en be­yond us­ing Par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege to drop “hints for dis­trac­tion” and not di­vulge ful­ly.

She added, “If any­one, more­so a Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial, had in­for­ma­tion on pros­ti­tutes and hu­man traf­fick­ing and they didn’t take it to the po­lice, it is a se­ri­ous in­dict­ment on their char­ac­ter.”