Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi has re­vealed that a piece of art was re­turned to for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan as repa­ra­tion and re­turn of monies to T&T in the Pi­ar­co case—and it was hang­ing in the AG’s of­fice when Al-Rawi en­tered that of­fice.

Ex-AG Al-Rawi spoke about the is­sue in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, dur­ing de­bate on UNC MP Sad­dam Ho­sein’s no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds.

“...Bold-faced and shame­less!” Al-Rawi said, cit­ing UNC’s re­fusal to sup­port bail and oth­er an­ti-crime laws.

Won­der­ing if the Op­po­si­tion was afraid, Al-Rawi said re­cent events have demon­strat­ed “you can run for 15 years, 19 years—in white-col­lar crime, the wheels of jus­tice may turn slow­ly but they def­i­nite­ly turn.”

Al-Rawi said the “Ex­plain Your Wealth” law has worked with cas­es be­fore the court cur­rent­ly.

“When those cas­es mush­room and be­come prece­dent, they’ll be as pow­er­ful as the 19 years it took to de­liv­er the Pi­ar­co in­ter­na­tion­al scan­dal,” he said.

He said in that mat­ter, five Amer­i­cans went to jail on plea agree­ments that they “tief mon­ey from T&T” and they for­feit­ed as­sets.

He said the US gov­ern­ment gave “mil­lions of dol­lars to Anand Ram­lo­gan as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and to the Comp­trol­ler of Ac­counts over 2010-2015.”

By way of re­turn­ing stolen monies to T&T, Al-Rawi re­lat­ed, “When I was in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, there was this rather un­usu­al paint­ing in the of­fice. I looked at it on the wall and asked ‘what on earth is this’?

“They said ‘boss you dun­no what that is ?’ I said, no. They said, ‘Well, that is a stolen piece of art which was re­turned to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan as repa­ra­tions, as re­turn of monies to T&T in the Pi­ar­co case.

“It’s worth hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars, (it’s) by a fa­mous artist—it was hang­ing up in the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice—Anand Ram­lo­gan ...the same UNC.

“In all their al­le­ga­tions that the (Pi­ar­co case) was po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion, if it was, why did you ac­cept the mon­ey from the US gov­ern­ment? Why didn’t you tell the pop­u­la­tion there were monies be­ing re­turned to T&T?”

He said the piece of art hang­ing in the of­fice where he lat­er sat for sev­en years “...rep­re­sent­ed ‘tief mon­ey’ which was re­turned to T&T and sup­pressed by the UNC...”

Al-Rawi said UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was in Gov­ern­ment in 1995-2000 and 2010-15 and ought to have been ca­pa­ble of tes­ti­fy­ing to the facts he’d giv­en, yet she’d claimed it was po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion.

UNC leav­ing a Ras­ta­man alone to bear the cross

Al-Rawi said while Ho­sein claimed Hinds was re­spon­si­ble for pub­lic safe­ty, the Con­sti­tu­tion stat­ed Par­lia­ment—col­lec­tive­ly—makes laws for peace, or­der and good gov­er­nance.

“The Op­po­si­tion is part and par­cel of pub­lic safe­ty—they try­ing a fast one!”

He said the Op­po­si­tion in­sist­ed on not sup­port­ing cru­cial­ly need­ed law.

“So, we’re be­ing told the Min­is­ter must fin­ish a 100-me­tre race but what (Ho­sein) isn’t say­ing is that he’s re­spon­si­ble for caus­ing the Min­is­ter to stop at 99 me­tres,” Al-Rawi said.

“We’re see­ing a re­volv­ing door of peo­ple al­leged to have com­mit­ted crimes go­ing to get bail and re­turn­ing to the street to com­mit more crime!”

He said Gov­ern­ment want­ed to make pos­ses­sion of any au­to­mat­ic weapon non-bail­able.

And if any of them have the guts to stand up and sup­port that law, then they will not be leav­ing a Ras­ta man alone to bear a cross by him­self!”

Not­ing how bail law worked over 2007-09 to re­duce kid­nap­pings to ze­ro, how the PP gov­ern­ment em­u­lat­ed it—and PNM in Op­po­si­tion sup­port­ed their laws—, he said if the UNC won’t give Hinds the same force of law to take peo­ple to court as the PP’s four Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ters, “then you farse and out of place to con­demn (Hinds)!”

“They say­ing, ‘don’t use the same tools we had, you do it with your two hands tied be­hind your back and one leg sling up...Shame­less, bold­faced!”