Gail Alexan­der

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has sought le­gal coun­sel on a let­ter from Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass’ at­tor­ney Anand Ram­lo­gan SC’s Free­dom Cham­bers, which Im­bert says con­tains “out­ra­geous, false and defam­a­to­ry ac­cu­sa­tions and al­le­ga­tions”.

And Im­bert says the let­ter’s in­sin­u­a­tion that he as Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, or min­istry of­fi­cials, un­eth­i­cal­ly back­dat­ed the Amend­ed Pub­lic Ac­counts to Jan­u­ary 31, 2024, to cov­er a mis­take, when the true date on the Amend­ed Pub­lic Ac­counts is April 16, 2024, is a bla­tant un­truth that has been put in­to the pub­lic do­main and this mat­ter now re­quires a full in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“... The find­ings of which will be re­port­ed to the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and any oth­er rel­e­vant of­fice hold­er for their re­view and what­ev­er ac­tion these in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions deem ap­pro­pri­ate,” Im­bert added in a state­ment to the Sen­ate yes­ter­day.

Im­bert spoke ahead of a Gov­ern­ment mo­tion seek­ing to ex­tend the time to present in­for­ma­tion on T&T’s 2023 ac­counts to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.

This, af­ter the im­passe where the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al de­clined to put in­to her 2023 re­port on T&T’s ac­counts, fig­ures for $2.6 bil­lion which Fi­nance Min­istry di­vi­sions found in Feb­ru­ary were not fac­tored in­to their state­ments for 2023. This was due to prob­lems with a new elec­tron­ic cheque-clear­ing sys­tem used by the Cen­tral Bank. The $2.6 bil­lion was found af­ter Trea­sury Di­vi­sion state­ments of T&T’s ac­counts were pre­sent­ed on time—Jan­u­ary 31, 2024—to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al. Af­ter nu­mer­ous out­reach­es to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, she agreed to ac­cept the up­dat­ed state­ment on April 16—but the $2.6 bil­lion was not re­flect­ed in her 2023 re­port.

In his state­ment, Im­bert said last Sun­day at 5.51 pm, he re­ceived from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al an elec­tron­ic copy of a le­gal let­ter from Free­dom Law Cham­bers, head­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, with UNC Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al list­ed on the firm’s let­ter­head as the first as­so­ciate in those law cham­bers.

Im­bert said, “The let­ter con­tained a num­ber of out­ra­geous, false and defam­a­to­ry ac­cu­sa­tions and al­le­ga­tions, about which I have sought le­gal coun­sel, and was pur­port­ed­ly based on in­struc­tion giv­en by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, Ms Jai­wantie Ram­dass, to Free­dom Law Cham­bers.”

Im­bert de­tailed the al­le­ga­tions (See box), adding, “The al­le­ga­tions made against me as Fi­nance Min­is­ter and the ded­i­cat­ed pub­lic ser­vants in­volved in pro­duc­tion of the na­tion­al ac­counts on an an­nu­al ba­sis are to­tal­ly false.

“Through­out the let­ter from the Free­dom Law Cham­bers, the terms ‘MOF’ and ‘Min­istry of Fi­nance ‘and ref­er­ence to of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of Fi­nance are co-min­gled and con­fused with the per­sona of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, with the clear in­ten­tion to give the false im­pres­sion that the orig­i­nal and amend­ed pub­lic ac­counts for the fi­nan­cial year 2023 were pre­pared and sub­mit­ted to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance him­self, when noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth.”

He said the min­is­ter does not pre­pare, de­clare, cer­ti­fy or sub­mit the na­tion­al ac­counts to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.

“The na­tion­al ac­counts are pre­pared, de­clared, cer­ti­fied and sub­mit­ted by the Ac­count­ing Of­fi­cer in the Fi­nance Min­istry—the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary—and are co-signed by the Comp­trol­ler of Ac­counts and the Trea­sury Di­rec­tor. The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance isn’t in­volved in this ex­er­cise,” he said.

Im­bert said it was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing that the let­ter al­leged the min­istry “un­eth­i­cal­ly back­dat­ed the amend­ed Pub­lic Ac­counts to Jan­u­ary 31, 2024, to cov­er a fi­nan­cial mis­take of un­prece­dent­ed mag­ni­tude with grave fi­nan­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions”.

New di­men­sion

Im­bert said since he did not pre­pare or amend the pub­lic ac­counts, nor date, cer­ti­fy or sub­mit them to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, “I con­sult­ed with the staff in the min­istry about this very se­ri­ous ac­cu­sa­tion of im­prop­er con­duct on the part of the MOF. I was sub­se­quent­ly sent a copy of the State­ment of De­c­la­ra­tion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sub­mit­ted by min­istry of­fi­cials to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al with the Amend­ed Pub­lic Ac­counts, on April 16, 2024. From what has been shown to me, this State­ment of De­c­la­ra­tion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Amend­ed Pub­lic Ac­counts is dat­ed April 16, 2024, and not Jan­u­ary 31, 2024, as false­ly al­leged in the let­ter from Free­dom Law Cham­bers.”

Im­bert said he had seen on the April 16 De­c­la­ra­tion, the sig­na­tures of the min­istry’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, the Comp­trol­ler of Ac­counts and the Trea­sury Di­rec­tor and the date “April 16, 2024”, writ­ten in their own hands.

He added, “The in­sin­u­a­tion that I as Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, or, al­ter­na­tive­ly, the of­fi­cials in the min­istry, un­eth­i­cal­ly back­dat­ed the Amend­ed Pub­lic Ac­counts to Jan­u­ary 31, 2024, to cov­er a mis­take of un­prece­dent­ed mag­ni­tude in the na­tion­al ac­counts has there­fore tak­en on a new di­men­sion. If the doc­u­ment shown to me is au­then­tic, and the true date on the State­ment of De­c­la­ra­tion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Amend­ed Pub­lic Ac­counts for the Fi­nan­cial Year 2023, sub­mit­ted by min­istry of­fi­cials, is, in fact, April 16, 2024, and not Jan­u­ary 31, 2024, then a bla­tant un­truth has been put in­to the pub­lic do­main.”

Pre-ac­tion let­ter’s al­le­ga­tions

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the Free­dom Cham­ber let­ter used the acronym “MOF” on pages which could be in­ter­pret­ed by a mem­ber of the pub­lic as the “Min­is­ter of Fi­nance”.

Im­bert said the let­ter al­leged that:

• ↓The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­ceived from the MOF, two sets of Pub­lic Ac­counts, com­pris­ing the Orig­i­nal Ac­counts and the Amend­ed Pub­lic Ac­counts for the fi­nan­cial year 2023 with a State­ment of De­c­la­ra­tion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion dat­ed Jan­u­ary 31, 2024, show­ing a State­ment of Rev­enue fig­ure of $64,488,503,781.84.

• ↓That both the orig­i­nal and amend­ed state­ments were dat­ed Jan­u­ary 31, 2024, de­spite the er­ror which caused the amend­ments be­ing dis­cov­ered in March 2024, long af­ter the statu­to­ry dead­line of Jan­u­ary 31, 2024.

• ↓That the MOF sim­ply back­dat­ed the orig­i­nal ac­counts and re­placed the old rev­enue fig­ure with the new one and that it did so with­out show­ing any amend­ment to the na­tion­al ac­counts.

• ↓The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al “... quite prop­er­ly viewed this as an un­eth­i­cal at­tempt to back­date the orig­i­nal na­tion­al ac­counts which were sub­mit­ted to her to cov­er what was a fi­nan­cial mis­take of un­prece­dent­ed mag­ni­tude with grave fi­nan­cial eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions”.

Im­bert said the let­ter “fla­grant­ly mis­rep­re­sents state­ments” he made in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Fri­day in the de­bate on the mo­tion to ex­tend the time to present in­for­ma­tion to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al. The let­ter al­so false­ly ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to co­erce and in­tim­i­date the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al in­to do­ing its bid­ding in breach of the law.