Max­ie Cuffie

Last Sun­day's News­day had a pret­ty dam­ag­ing sto­ry, if you hap­pened to be a part­ner of the au­dit­ing firm Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers. And es­pe­cial­ly if you were Col­in Wharfe, Kei­th Daniel, An­ton Gopauls­ingh, or Steve Ra­goo­bar, the part­ners who were ac­cused of ac­quir­ing mil­lion-dol­lar flats in the high-end One Wood­brook Place apart­ment com­plex. And to make the sto­ry worse, it was al­leged that Wharfe and Gopauls­ingh, con­trary to the law, had paid no stamp du­ty on the prop­er­ties.

The News­day fol­lowed up with a re­port that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai, hav­ing read the sto­ry, was in­ves­ti­gat­ing the trans­ac­tion.On the third day, it emerged that the sto­ry was to­tal­ly false and that the re­porter (al­though one couldn't tell from the way the sto­ry was writ­ten) had mis­read the doc­u­ments and not on­ly were the trans­ac­tions to­tal­ly le­git­i­mate but that the au­di­tors had all paid the re­quired stamp du­ty.

Still, not daunt­ed, News­day re­port­ed that Sir An­tho­ny Col­man, the sole com­mis­sion­er of the Cli­co/HCU en­quiry, had launched an en­quiry in­to the mat­ter al­though he was then in Sin­ga­pore.The fol­low­ing day, that too turned out to have been false, as the pa­per re­port­ed that not on­ly had Howai found the trans­ac­tions to be to­tal­ly above board, but that Col­man had de­nied ini­ti­at­ing any en­quiry in­to the mat­ter which was, in any case, out­side his re­mit.

Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers TT is­sued a state­ment to the ef­fect that all the trans­ac­tions men­tioned in the News­day re­port were con­duct­ed at mar­ket val­ue and found to be to­tal­ly above board.The me­dia can some­times get it wrong and in such cas­es have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ac­knowl­edge their er­rors and make a good-faith cor­rec­tion.

An of­fend­ed par­ty, es­pe­cial­ly in the case of al­le­ga­tions as grave as that made out against the Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers part­ners, has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to quick­ly cor­rect the record, as did their in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners and the Cli­co/HCU In­quiry sec­re­tari­at. For­tu­nate­ly for their or­gan­i­sa­tions Howai, Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers and Sir An­tho­ny quick­ly moved to pro­tect their or­gan­i­sa­tions' rep­u­ta­tion.

But an even more trou­bling re­port ap­peared in last Sun­day's Guardian, head­lined "Min­is­ter's son un­der sealed in­dict­ment in US" and mak­ing the kinds of al­le­ga­tions that can bring down a gov­ern­ment. A fol­low-up re­port, broad­cast by CCN TV 6 al­leged that two sons of a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter had found them­selves in prob­lems over at­tempts to laun­der sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey for which they could not ac­count.

There has been no at­tempt by the gov­ern­ment to pro­tect the rep­u­ta­tion of the min­is­ter con­cerned or even of the coun­try.This is a se­ri­ous sto­ry and has im­pli­ca­tions for the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and all of T&T. Par­tic­u­lar­ly since the sug­ges­tion is that the sons are be­ing held as part of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the source of funds of the fa­ther. The coun­try's na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and the sanc­ti­ty of the na­tion­al trea­sury are at stake.

As Fi­nance Min­is­ter, Howai is the guardian of the trea­sury. There was, how­ev­er, no in­di­ca­tion that he had tak­en an in­ter­est in the re­port, which has far greater ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the coun­try's cof­fers than the loss of stamp du­ty oc­ca­sioned from two re­al es­tate trans­ac­tions.

Un­like Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers and Sir An­tho­ny, how­ev­er, Howai and the gov­ern­ment seem pre­pared to al­low a dam­ag­ing re­port to fes­ter.

I ex­pect­ed a ve­he­ment state­ment from the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, ei­ther ex­press­ing his de­nial af­ter in­ves­ti­gat­ing all his col­leagues with two adult sons who were out of the ju­ris­dic­tion (an ex­treme­ly short list), or an ex­pres­sion of his in­ter­est in work­ing with the Amer­i­can au­thor­i­ties to fa­cil­i­tate any ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion they may re­quire.In­stead, he dared the me­dia to call names.

Even more shock­ing­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar tells the coun­try that she made po­lite en­quiries of her min­is­ters and none of them ad­mit­ted to hav­ing any such sit­u­a­tion. As an at­tor­ney, and a prime min­is­ter who likes to bran­dish her se­nior coun­sel sta­tus, she must know that the job of PM and head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil re­quires more than that.

Two weeks ago the Prime Min­is­ter was beam­ing in the news­pa­pers as she clasped hands with a stern-faced US At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Er­ic Hold­er in Haiti. The sto­ry had been mak­ing the rounds even be­fore that. A con­cerned PM would have used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to as­cer­tain the truth of the mat­ter rather than just us­ing the chance for a pho­to op.

Most trou­bling of all is the role of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has port­fo­lio re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Mu­tu­al Le­gal As­sis­tance Treaty with the US. He is the one with whom the FBI or the IRS, through the US At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, has to li­aise in any in­ves­ti­ga­tion on a T&T na­tion­al.The AG, how­ev­er, de­clined com­ment when the Ex­press con­tact­ed him for the sto­ry.

The AG has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to be as dili­gent in the pur­suit of this mat­ter as he has been in his–so far fruit­less–at­tempt to have any­one pros­e­cut­ed for cor­rup­tion un­der the PNM, al­though he has spent hun­dreds of mil­lions in try­ing.The coun­try needs a cat­e­gor­i­cal state­ment from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al that he has li­aised with his Amer­i­can col­leagues and can as­sure the na­tion that the US has no in­ter­est in any of his cab­i­net col­leagues or their off­spring with whom they are in busi­ness.

Giv­en the coun­try's fail­ure to ex­tra­dite Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son, any sug­ges­tion that the gov­ern­ment is pro­tect­ing "a high-val­ued tar­get" of FBI in­ves­ti­ga­tions could on­ly wors­en our re­la­tions with the US and any at­tempt to co-op­er­ate with T&T on le­gal/na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters.For­tu­nate­ly, the PM has told us that she ques­tioned her min­is­ters and all is well.

I am still wor­ried, how­ev­er, about why Hold­er re­fused to smile for that pic­ture.

Max­ie Cuffie runs a me­dia con­sul­tan­cy, In­te­grat­ed Me­dia Com­pa­ny Ltd, is an eco­nom­ics grad­u­ate of the UWI and holds an MPA from the Har­vard Kennedy School as a Ma­son Fel­low in Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Man­age­ment.