Gail Alexan­der

Since it is a crime in T&T to of­fer a bribe, the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er must al­so probe bribery al­le­ga­tions against Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er and the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms must probe al­le­ga­tions how suit­cas­es of US cur­ren­cy were im­port­ed in­to T&T in the FI­FA is­sue, PNM Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds has said.Re­fer­ring to the Warn­er/FI­FA mat­ter in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, Hinds al­so brought the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Squad and Fraud Squad in­to the pic­ture.Say­ing Gov­ern­ment was at­tempt­ing to "hide, pro­tect and ob­fus­cate when one of its own is be­ing called in­to ques­tion," Hinds added:"I call on the Prime Min­is­ter to take ac­tion against any mem­ber of her Gov­ern­ment against whom these al­le­ga­tions have been made and in so do­ing she will demon­strate her Cab­i­net's com­mit­ment to deal­ing with crime.In broad ref­er­ence to the cur­rent FI­FA is­sue, Hinds had fre­quent skir­mish­es with Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) Sen­ate leader Sub­has Pan­day and al­so clashed sev­er­al times with the act­ing Sen­ate pres­i­dent on the mat­ter.Hinds spoke dur­ing de­bate on leg­is­la­tion to pro­vide for the vest­ing of func­tions and pow­ers to the Jus­tice Min­is­ter.The bill trans­fers the pow­er of cer­tain laws-from crim­i­nal in­juries com­pen­sa­tion law to Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty-from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to the Jus­tice Min­istry.Hinds said PP's man­i­festo had promised a Jus­tice Min­istry in 30 days, yet work for that was now be­ing done."I'm not see­ing them man­i­fest­ing jus­tice," Hinds added.Not­ing the FI­FA is­sue, Hinds said: "What is Gov­ern­ment and the Prime Min­is­ter do­ing about it when one of her min­is­ters is be­ing ac­cused in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, bring­ing T&T in­to dis­re­pute, ab­solute­ly noth­ing."

Hinds asked: "If some­one al­leged to the Jus­tice Min­is­ter that a min­is­ter of­fered a bribe or re­quest­ed a bribe, whether in T&T or out­side, a mat­ter nat­u­ral­ly cov­ered by the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act, as bribe-tak­ing is against T&T law, what should be done to demon­strate this will to deal with crime?"What if some­one re­port­ed that to the Prime Min­is­ter rather than the Jus­tice Min­is­ter, what should she do as Cab­i­net's head?"Ac­cus­ing Gov­ern­ment of ap­ply­ing dou­ble stan­dards, Hinds not­ed an April 22, 2005, a state­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing a Par­lia­ment de­bate while she was Siparia MP.Hinds said she had called on for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to re­fer for­mer PNM min­is­ters Franklin Khan and Er­ic Williams to the Fraud Squad and An­ti Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau re­gard­ing al­le­ga­tions at that time.He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said those units were the au­thor­i­ty which had ju­ris­dic­tion over mat­ters, such as bribery."To­day she's the Prime Min­is­ter (so) we have to won­der now where is the con­sis­ten­cy if to­day se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions are be­ing made against a min­is­ter, but we are be­ing told of the court stan­dard, 'in­no­cent un­til proven guilty.'"Not­ing that it is a crime in T&T to of­fer a bribe, Hinds called on the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to probe bribery al­le­ga­tions against Warn­er apart from the in­ter­na­tion­al in­ves­ti­ga­tions oc­cur­ring "since a crime against T&T may have been com­mit­ted."

Call­ing for the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms to check whether large sums of US cur­ren­cy were im­port­ed in­to T&T with­out de­c­la­ra­tion, Hinds added:"If not where did the mon­ey come from to fund it lo­cal­ly? These are is­sues which the Jus­tice and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ters must ad­dress."PP's Pan­day in­ter­ject­ed: " Those are mere­ly al­le­ga­tions. You us­ing al­le­ga­tions to ask the comp­trol­ler to in­ves­ti­gate?"Hinds be­gan to re­ply. Sen­ate vice pres­i­dent Lyn­di­ra Ou­dit halt­ed him, say­ing:"I'm go­ing to ask that those state­ments be striked (sic) from the record sim­ply be­cause these mat­ter are not un­der the purview of this bill."Hinds sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion on which state­ments and on the ba­sis for that. Thaat caused protest from PP's David Ab­du­lah and Pan­day with PNM sen­a­tor Faris Al Rawi in­ter­ject­ing on Hinds' be­half.When Al Rawi per­sist­ed, PP sen­a­tors, loud­ly desk-pound­ed, try­ing to halt him. Ou­dit al­so chas­tised Al Rawi for stand­ing at the same time as the two PP sen­a­tors.Al Rawi not­ed Ab­du­lah and Pan­day were al­lowed to stand while Hinds was mak­ing a point. He said Gov­ern­ment was "on a mis­sion to cur­tail Op­po­si­tion voic­es."Ou­dit told sen­a­tors the strik­ing out would ap­ply to ref­er­ence of pri­vate per­sons who were not mem­bers of the House.She said Hinds made ref­er­ence to "a gen­tle­man." Ou­dit did not in­struct the press to ex­punge any spe­cif­ic state­ments.Hinds said Gov­ern­ment was be­lea­guered, "hav­ing lost one of one their own re­cent­ly and at great risk of los­ing an­oth­er."Cit­ing dou­ble stan­dards, he added: "We had an­oth­er sen­a­tor called Mary King here up to re­cent­ly. She's not here any­more."'In­no­cent till proven guilty', yet she's gone. I see no dis­sim­i­lar­i­ty be­tween the case I've al­lud­ed to and what ex­ist­ed in Mary King's case."