As To­ba­go busi­ness­man Al­lan Warn­er pre­pares for his court date lat­er this month, the po­lice are yet to be ad­vised if in­struc­tions will be giv­en to seize the land and ma­te­ri­als al­leged­ly used in the quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tion.

Warn­er, 74, was charged last Thurs­day for pro­cess­ing min­er­als with­out a li­cence when he vis­it­ed the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion with his at­tor­ney. Warn­er was charged with the same of­fence as his son Aluko Ato Warn­er. Aluko was charged in May. The younger Warn­er was among eight held at a quar­ry­ing site on Moo­nan Road, Agua San­ta, Waller­field.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, one se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer dis­closed that the next phase of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion would be for the au­thor­i­ties to seize the land and ma­te­ri­als in the quar­ry­ing op­er­a­tion.

He said while the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) would make the de­ci­sion, in­ves­ti­ga­tors have not re­ceived any de­fin­i­tive in­struc­tions. “At this point, the of­fi­cers are just wait­ing to hear what de­ci­sion is to be made. We will have to wait and see, but if a de­ci­sion is made to seize the ma­te­ri­als, it would re­quire an in­ter­ven­tion from the po­lice, the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA) and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies with a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for land.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact the el­der Warn­er sev­er­al times via phone call and What­sApp but did not re­ceive any re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.

 Mean­while, Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to the TTPS cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit on whether Warn­er’s FUL would be re­voked as he had been charged but did not re­ceive a re­sponse.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the FUL mat­ter, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said that even af­ter some­one was charged with an of­fence, the de­ci­sion to re­voke an FUL was made at the dis­cre­tion of the sit­ting po­lice com­mis­sion­er.

He not­ed that con­sid­er­a­tions were weighed based on the na­ture of the crime com­mit­ted.

“There’s no hard and fast rule to it. Some­body could be charged with a very mi­nor of­fence; should that now de­prive the in­di­vid­ual of keep­ing a firearm if the rea­son he got the firearm in the first place is be­cause of a bla­tant, clear, and present threat to his life? It’s all based on a judg­ment call.”

Sec­tion 21 (b) of the Firearms Act states that the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice may re­voke any li­cence, cer­tifi­cate or per­mit if “the hold­er there­of is of in­tem­per­ate habits or of un­sound mind, or is oth­er­wise un­fit to be en­trust­ed with such a firearm or am­mu­ni­tion as may be men­tioned in the li­cence, cer­tifi­cate or per­mit.” 

No com­ment from In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion  

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing on Sun­day, Op­po­si­tion MP Sad­dam Ho­sein called on the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion (IC) to in­ves­ti­gate Warn­er’s friend­ship with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley fol­low­ing re­ports that in­quiries were made per­tain­ing to Warn­er’s Firearm Users’ Li­cense (FUL) ap­pli­ca­tion and a blast­ing li­cense for quar­ry­ing ac­tiv­i­ty.

It was re­port­ed in an­oth­er dai­ly news­pa­per that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and then Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young asked for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith about the state of the li­cens­es Warn­er ap­plied for.

Both Dr Row­ley and Young have since firm­ly de­nied that they “fast-tracked” any ap­pli­ca­tion, in­sist­ing that they sim­ply asked about the li­cences. Warn­er al­so re­port­ed­ly de­nied ask­ing for any help from ei­ther the Prime Min­is­ter or Young in ob­tain­ing the li­cences.

In 2021, Ho­sein made a com­plaint to the com­mis­sion over Dr Row­ley al­leged­ly fail­ing to de­clare a town­house in To­ba­go he and his wife pur­chased in a com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­oped by Warn­er’s com­pa­ny. Row­ley re­peat­ed­ly de­nied any wrong­do­ing, as he claimed that, from his decades of ex­pe­ri­ence in sub­mit­ting such de­c­la­ra­tions, he was not re­quired to in­clude the prop­er­ty on the Reg­is­ter of In­ter­est Form but did so on oth­er de­c­la­ra­tion forms.

The com­mis­sion stat­ed that it had de­lib­er­at­ed up­on Ho­sein’s com­plaint and was sat­is­fied that there was no mer­it in an al­le­ga­tion con­tained in the com­plaint against the PM.

The com­mis­sion even­tu­al­ly closed its in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Ho­sein called for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be re­opened.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on Mon­day, chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion Hay­den Git­tens said he was un­able to com­ment on the mat­ter, re­fer­ring to the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act, which lim­it­ed mak­ing pub­lic state­ments on mat­ters that were un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Guardian Me­dia al­so sent ques­tions via email to the com­mis­sion’s reg­is­trar Isha George, who ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt but did not pro­vide a re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.