Se­nior Re­porter

An in­tense three-month po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to ACP Ir­win Hack­shaw, fol­low­ing a news­pa­per re­port which claimed he had al­leged­ly been flagged for sus­pi­cious fi­nan­cial ac­tiv­i­ty at three banks, has been closed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice with the of­fi­cer be­ing ex­on­er­at­ed from any crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia last evening that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was con­duct­ed by ACP William Nurse of the Port-of-Spain and West­ern Di­vi­sion and was lat­er sub­mit­ted to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith.

The news­pa­per re­port in March had al­leged Hack­shaw had been flagged for ac­tiv­i­ty dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2014-2019 and the three banks re­port­ed the mat­ter to the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Hack­shaw has since tak­en le­gal ac­tion against the Trinidad Ex­press, claim­ing from day one he had been treat­ed un­fair­ly.

In­sid­ers fa­mil­iar with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion said the re­port in­di­cat­ed that Hack­shaw on­ly had three main ac­counts in which do­na­tions to­talling un­der $.25m were giv­en for five po­lice events over the pe­ri­od 2014-2018. The re­port, Guardian Me­dia was al­so re­li­ably in­formed, said Hack­shaw, who had al­so earned mon­ey pri­vate­ly from se­cu­ri­ty-re­lat­ed con­sul­tan­cy, had per­mis­sion to con­duct this ac­tiv­i­ty. Se­nior po­lice sources said af­ter in­ter­view­ing sev­er­al bank em­ploy­ees at RBC and Sco­tia­bank, the banks did not con­sid­er that Hack­shaw had to file a source of funds de­c­la­ra­tion and in­di­cat­ed that all the de­posits were le­gal.

In­sid­ers say ACP Nurse not­ed that Hack­shaw ac­counts had “size­able de­posits of cheques and cash,” but the bank nev­er raised any con­cerns about the mat­ter. In his fi­nal re­port, Nurse con­clud­ed that the banks found no ev­i­dence that Hack­shaw was cul­pa­ble on the is­sue of re­ceiv­ing and so­lic­it­ing do­na­tions to host po­lice events and al­so con­clud­ed that there had not been any ev­i­dence to sug­gest any li­a­bil­i­ty on the part of Hack­shaw for any crim­i­nal of­fence.

Se­nior po­lice sources say con­fir­ma­tion had al­so been sought that Hack­shaw had filed his tax­es through the Board of In­land Rev­enue.

Nurse thus rec­om­mend­ed that the po­lice file be closed on this mat­ter.

Guardian Me­dia al­so un­der­stands that the be­hav­iour of a for­mer DCP al­leged to have in­struct­ed a se­nior FIU mem­ber to search Hack­shaw’s bank ac­counts with­out any rea­son­able cause was al­so not­ed in Nurse’s re­port.