I could not be the on­ly per­son in Trinidad and To­ba­go who finds the le­gal mat­ter brought by the Gov­ern­ment against suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve, to be more cap­ti­vat­ing than a Net­flix se­ries.

The pop­u­la­tion of T&T has ex­pe­ri­enced all the el­e­ments of an ex­tra­or­di­nary dra­ma in the last two months, dur­ing which there has been a con­test be­tween good and evil, a promi­nent cit­i­zen of this Re­pub­lic and his wife have been in­car­cer­at­ed, and the pri­vate tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion of two na­tion­als has been in­ter­cept­ed and pub­li­cised.

This dra­ma came to light on June 10, in­to the ear­ly hours of the fol­low­ing day, when At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie made com­ments threat­en­ing that “Teteron awaits” mem­bers of the so-called one per cent who break the law.

In wind­ing up the de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency at 12:15 am on the morn­ing of June 11, Mr Je­re­mie went fur­ther than his ear­li­er gen­er­alised threats, when he said: “In re­spect of the ob­ser­vance of the law, all per­sons in Trinidad and To­ba­go, every sin­gle per­son in Trinidad and To­ba­go whether you hap­pen to be a fun­der of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, whether you hap­pen to be a mem­ber of the one per cent, if you break the law, if you cross that line that would ex­cite the Mem­ber for Tu­na­puna. I want to be very care­ful.

“The Mem­ber for Tu­na­puna, whose job it is to write PDOs (Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders), well, then, you know what? Whether you are a black man from the Beetham, or whether you hap­pen to live in Bayshore and are steal­ing gov­ern­ment land and prop­er­ty?

“... I do not know, I am just say­ing whether. I am just say­ing whether. Whether you hap­pen to be do­ing that, whether you hap­pen to have called the of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al es­sen­tial­ly at mid­night on the 28th, when the re­sults of the elec­tions were com­ing in, to say, ‘Lis­ten, get that lease fixed up for me now.’

“The Mem­ber for Tu­na­puna and the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty will cer­tain­ly put you on a PDO with “Pipey” and Ra­jaee Ali down in Teteron.”

Roger Alexan­der is the MP for Tu­na­puna and the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty.

The T&T At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s ref­er­ence to Teteron is to the main bar­racks of the T&T Reg­i­ment, which has been used as a spe­cialised mil­i­tary de­ten­tion fa­cil­i­ty to house high-risk pris­on­ers and in­di­vid­u­als held un­der PDOs dur­ing states of emer­gency.

With­out a doubt, Mr Je­re­mie’s ref­er­ence to “whether you live in Bayshore and are steal­ing gov­ern­ment land and prop­er­ty,” is to a dis­pute that his gov­ern­ment has with Mr Hadeed, over 450 acres of land at the Or­ange Grove Es­tate in east Trinidad. He ac­quired the prop­er­ty from the French multi­na­tion­al bev­er­age gi­ant Pern­od Ri­card in 2007.

As out­lined in my Ju­ly 9 com­men­tary in this space, head­lined ‘Is Mr Hadeed re­al­ly a friend of the PNM?’ the busi­ness­man has oc­cu­pied the land for 19 years, built a mas­sive wa­ter and bev­er­age fac­to­ry on the land and spent years at­tempt­ing to ne­go­ti­ate the lease for the prop­er­ty.

I agree with the af­fi­davit filed by Mr Hadeed on Ju­ly 3, 2026, that Mr Je­re­mie used Par­lia­ment to de­clare that the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty “will cer­tain­ly put you on a PDO,” and that the “you” in the clause re­ferred to the busi­ness­man. I al­so agree with him that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s words demon­strate that Mr Hadeed’s de­ten­tion un­der the PDO “was pub­licly fore­shad­owed, and had been pre­de­ter­mined, be­fore any ma­te­r­i­al ca­pa­ble of jus­ti­fy­ing such an or­der could have ex­ist­ed or been placed be­fore the Min­is­ter.”

Ques­tions:

1) How can Mr Hadeed be ac­cused of “steal­ing gov­ern­ment land and prop­er­ty,” when he had been try­ing to ne­go­ti­ate a lease for the land at the Or­ange Grove Es­tate for near­ly two decades?

2) Did Mr Hadeed roll up the 450-acre par­cel of land, put it in his back pock­et, and then at­tempt to evade the po­lice who were chas­ing him out of the Or­ange Grove Es­tate?

3) Is it pos­si­ble that Mr Je­re­mie’s dis­clo­sures to Par­lia­ment in the small hours of June 11 could have tipped off Mr Hadeed that he was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for “steal­ing gov­ern­ment land and prop­er­ty?”

4) Is it not clear that the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act makes tip­ping off a crime, which is pun­ish­able, up­on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion, by a fine of $10 mil­lion and ten years im­pris­on­ment?

5) Is it true that T&T’s Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit states that the crime of tip­ping off "oc­curs when a per­son knows or sus­pects that law en­force­ment is in­ves­ti­gat­ing (or plan­ning to in­ves­ti­gate) mon­ey laun­der­ing or ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing and dis­clos­es de­tails to any oth­er per­son that could hin­der or com­pro­mise that in­ves­ti­ga­tion?"

6) If the Gov­ern­ment could ac­cuse Mr Hadeed of steal­ing gov­ern­ment land, is it a stretch to con­ceive that it could al­so be look­ing to put a mon­ey laun­der­ing charge on him?

7) Is there a prece­dent, any­where in the world, for an at­tor­ney gen­er­al, who is a gov­ern­ment’s prin­ci­pal le­gal ad­vi­sor, fore­shad­ow­ing the ar­rest and de­ten­tion of a promi­nent busi­ness­man in Par­lia­ment?

8) What has the Gov­ern­ment been ad­vised by its British King’s Coun­sel and its lo­cal at­tor­neys is like­ly to be the dis­po­si­tion of the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil to the Gov­ern­ment’s con­duct in this mat­ter, es­pe­cial­ly the par­lia­men­tary state­ments?

Star Sab­ga and the Privy Coun­cil

The ques­tion of the dis­po­si­tion of the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil is im­por­tant be­cause that in­sti­tu­tion is a crea­ture of prece­dent, es­pe­cial­ly its own.

My re­search on the Privy Coun­cil cas­es in which a gov­ern­ment has been re­quired to dis­close de­tails of in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions led to the 2023 case of Justin Ramoon and Anor v. Gov­er­nor of the Cay­man Is­lands. In that mat­ter, the Privy Coun­cil ruled that gov­ern­ments do not have an ab­solute right to hide be­hind se­cre­cy and must dis­close the un­der­ly­ing sub­stance (or “gist”) of in­tel­li­gence, in­clud­ing in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions, if a per­son’s lib­er­ty or right to a fair tri­al is at stake.

* Can the State’s case against the Hadeed’s stand up to the dis­clo­sure of the un­der­ly­ing sub­stance (or “gist”) of in­tel­li­gence, in­clud­ing in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions if the cou­ple's lib­er­ty or right to a fair tri­al is at stake?

I think not, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en Mr Je­re­mie’s cryp­tic com­ment on Mon­day, “Please re­mem­ber that giv­en mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, it is pos­si­ble for ex­ter­nal ac­tors to al­so con­duct in­ter­cep­tions.”

I may be wrong, but the on­ly ex­ter­nal ac­tor that is known to be as­sist­ing T&T with its se­cu­ri­ty is the US gov­ern­ment. Would the Amer­i­cans want ques­tions about the un­der­ly­ing sub­stance of their pos­si­ble in­ter­cep­tion of T&T com­mu­ni­ca­tions to be even raised in an open court? I think not. That is one rea­son that the State is un­like­ly to pur­sue the sub­stance of the Hadeed case for much longer.

It is al­so clear that the State’s case against Do­minic and Genevieve Hadeed and her aunt, Star Sab­ga re­lies heav­i­ly on in­tel­li­gence gath­ered by the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency, de­scribed as T&T’s pre­mier in­tel­li­gence.

It is now pub­lic knowl­edge that the State utilised the now in­fa­mous in­ter­cept­ed au­dio record­ing be­tween Genevieve Hadeed and her aunt, Star Sab­ga, as an im­por­tant as­pects of its case against Do­minic Hadeed.

But Guardian Me­dia court re­porter, Derek Achong, re­port­ed in yes­ter­day’s news­pa­per that one of Mr Hadeed’s at­tor­neys, Faris Al-Rawi, point­ed out that state­ments linked to Sab­ga in the record­ing were wrong­ly at­trib­uted to Hadeed and his wife in their PDOs.

In an af­fi­davit filed by Roger Alexan­der, T&T’s Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, it is stat­ed that Mr Hadeed “ex­pressed vi­o­lent in­ten­tions by stat­ing words to the ef­fect that per­sons would be shot in their head. In­tel­li­gence fur­ther in­di­cates that these state­ments were made in fur­ther­ance of a de­vel­op­ing plan to tar­get mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment.”

If that state­ment by Mr Alexan­der does not stand up of scruti­ny mean­ing if the Gov­ern­ment as­cribed com­ments made by Star Sab­ga to Do­minic Hadeed, it is cer­tain­ly game over for the State’s case against the cou­ple.