Rose­marie Sant

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi says Gov­ern­ment will act with­out “fear, favour, mal­ice or ill will,” as it deals with the busi­ness of the coun­try in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple and where there are is­sues to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed it will do so.

He was re­spond­ing to crit­i­cisms of Gov­ern­ment in­ter­fer­ence in State-run com­pa­nies to solve prob­lems or di­rect the way for­ward.

Al-Rawi al­so in­sist­ed there will be no deal with the own­ers of the Ocean Flower 2 giv­en pub­lic con­cerns about pro­cure­ment of the ves­sel and its sis­ter ship— the Cabo Star.

Re­spond­ing to al­le­ga­tions made this week at the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment by the for­mer chair­man of the Ed­u­ca­tion­al Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Arnold Pig­gott, Al-Rawi said “this is not a case of in­ter­fer­ence ver­sus in­ter­ven­tion. It is in­ter­fer­ence for peo­ple who are com­pelled now to give their sto­ry.”

Al-Rawi said, “the Of­fice of the AG re­ceived re­ports from whistle­blow­ers who in­formed of al­le­ga­tions against the EF­CL un­der the chair­man­ship of Arnold Pig­gott.”

As a re­sult, he said the AG’s of­fice “called for and ob­tained in­for­ma­tion from the EF­CL and from mem­bers of the Board of the EF­CL. We pro­vid­ed an opin­ion to the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion and we re­quest­ed an au­dit to be per­formed by the Cen­tral Au­dit Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Fi­nance.”

The ac­tion, he said, “is with­in the law­ful man­date of the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. It is the en­ti­ty that ad­vis­es on civ­il and crim­i­nal li­a­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment of TT&T and the State.”

The Cen­tral Au­dit Unit of the Min­istry of Fi­nance was brought in last year “to do a de­tailed foren­sic analy­sis of where the al­le­ga­tions stood. They have com­plet­ed their field work and the fi­nal re­port should be ready by (Thurs­day),” he said.

Noth­ing in that “fac­tu­al ma­trix”, he said, could be gleaned to be “in­ter­fer­ence, it is quite prop­er­ly in­ter­ven­tion be­cause it is with­in the man­date of the law­ful au­thor­i­ty of the AG’s of­fice.”

Sim­i­lar in­ter­ven­tions, he said, were made by his Min­istry at the Sports Com­pa­ny, the Port Au­thor­i­ty and Petrotrin. Where the in­ter­nal au­dit un­cov­ered al­le­ga­tions of a ‘fake oil’ scan­dal in which the com­pa­ny paid for oil it did not re­ceive.

Al-Rawi said, “ it was not a case of hid­ing or mis­di­rec­tion or malfea­sance, it demon­strat­ed the PNM ap­point­ed Board and the PNM gov­ern­ment were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the very things that they should.”

At the NFM, he said, the min­is­te­r­i­al in­ter­ven­tion was al­so jus­ti­fied in the pub­lic in­ter­est.