KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is call­ing on Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro to ex­plain what she de­scribes as a breach of the law in the han­dling of court doc­u­ments linked to the PNM’s fi­nanc­ing of Bal­isi­er House.

Ac­cord­ing to Beck­les, au­thor­i­ties al­lowed an ex parte un­ex­plained wealth or­der, dat­ed Ju­ly 10 and served on the par­ty’s Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings and lat­er on her, to en­ter the pub­lic do­main be­fore it was for­mal­ly served.

Speak­ing at an Op­po­si­tion me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Beck­les in­sist­ed the PNM has noth­ing to hide re­gard­ing the own­er­ship and fi­nanc­ing of its head­quar­ters.

She not­ed that the par­ty is cel­e­brat­ing its 70th an­niver­sary this year, ar­gu­ing that the ac­qui­si­tion of the prop­er­ty and con­struc­tion of its head­quar­ters were fund­ed through fundrais­ing ef­forts, in­clud­ing car raf­fles and do­na­tions.

Beck­les said the land was pur­chased 65 years ago.

She sug­gest­ed the tim­ing of the le­gal ac­tion was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed, re­call­ing al­le­ga­tions made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar af­ter her re­turn from the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly last year con­cern­ing al­leged drug fi­nanc­ing linked to Bal­isi­er House.

How­ev­er, Beck­les ar­gued that the Civ­il As­set Re­cov­ery and Man­age­ment and Un­ex­plained Wealth Act 2019 re­quires all doc­u­ments filed in such pro­ceed­ings to re­main un­der seal and con­fi­den­tial.

She not­ed that the Act pro­vides crim­i­nal penal­ties, in­clud­ing fines and im­pris­on­ment, for the un­law­ful dis­clo­sure of con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments.

“The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment has ab­solute­ly noth­ing to hide as it re­lates to Bal­isi­er House. So, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice must tell us how these doc­u­ments got in­to the pub­lic do­main, when they were al­ready in the press and avail­able for the pub­lic to see,” Beck­les said.

She al­so ques­tioned the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the ser­vice of the doc­u­ments on Cum­mings, al­leg­ing that arrange­ments had ini­tial­ly been made for him to be served at an agreed lo­ca­tion. In­stead, she claimed, of­fi­cers met him as he ar­rived at the air­port while some­one record­ed the in­ter­ac­tion and leaked the footage to the me­dia.

Beck­les added that, as the mat­ter pro­gress­es, the par­ty will en­sure that it has an ap­pro­pri­ate le­gal team in place.