Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

gail.alexan­der@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment will to­day present the Sen­ate with the Re­port of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al on the fi­nan­cial state­ments of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) for the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025. This is ex­pect­ed to be done by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

On Feb­ru­ary 11, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) at­tor­neys Ran­dall Mitchell and Stu­art Young sent Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo a le­gal let­ter on be­half of Con­gress of the Peo­ple field op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer Wen­dell Ever­s­ley. The let­ter con­cerned Tan­coo’s fail­ure to lay the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the HSF in Par­lia­ment by the re­quired time, which was Jan­u­ary 31, 2026.

The at­tor­neys gave Tan­coo 30 days to pro­vide ex­pla­na­tions for the de­lay or face ju­di­cial re­view. They cit­ed sec­tion 21 of the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Act, which gov­erns the min­is­ter’s an­nu­al re­port­ing oblig­a­tions. The Act states that with­in four months of the end of the fi­nan­cial year, the Min­is­ter shall cause the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments in re­spect of the Fund to be laid in Par­lia­ment.

The 2025 fis­cal year end­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2025, mean­ing the re­port was due on or be­fore Jan­u­ary 31, 2026. The at­tor­neys not­ed that, up to their Feb­ru­ary 11 let­ter, the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the 2025 fi­nan­cial year had not been laid in Par­lia­ment.

They sig­nalled their in­ten­tion to seek a de­c­la­ra­tion that the Min­is­ter’s fail­ure to lay the state­ments was un­law­ful and to re­quest an or­der di­rect­ing the Min­is­ter to lay the state­ments in Par­lia­ment forth­with. The le­gal team al­so re­quest­ed an­swers with­in 30 days of their let­ter, in­clud­ing con­fir­ma­tion of whether and on what date the state­ments were or would be laid in Par­lia­ment, an ex­pla­na­tion for the de­lay, and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of any statu­to­ry or ad­min­is­tra­tive ba­sis re­lied up­on for the non-com­pli­ance. In the ab­sence of a sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sponse with­in 30 days, the at­tor­neys stat­ed they in­tend­ed to pur­sue ju­di­cial re­view.

To­day, the Law Re­vi­sion (Amend­ment) Bill is al­so be­ing pre­sent­ed.

The Law Re­vi­sion Act, Chap­ter 3:03, specif­i­cal­ly al­lows for the Min­is­ter to whom re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for law re­vi­sion is as­signed. This law es­tab­lish­es the Com­mis­sion re­spon­si­ble for prepar­ing, pub­lish­ing and main­tain­ing the re­vised edi­tion of the Laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go.