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Friday, February 28, 2025

Dookeran not in support of probe into understated revenue for 2023

by

Dareece Polo
293 days ago
20240511
Former finance minister Winston Dookeran

Former finance minister Winston Dookeran

Shirley Bahadur

A for­mer Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, who al­so served as the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor, does not sup­port any in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the im­broglio be­tween the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and the Min­istry of Fi­nance.  

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, Win­ston Dook­er­an deemed the is­sues raised dur­ing the pub­lic spat as “ex­tra­or­di­nary”, adding that he has no rec­ol­lec­tion of a sim­i­lar in­ci­dent ever oc­cur­ring in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s his­to­ry. 

Dook­er­an was re­fer­ring to state­ments made by Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wan­tee Ram­dass, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, over a 2.6 bil­lion dol­lar un­der­state­ment in the 2023 pub­lic fi­nan­cial state­ments.  

The mat­ter has es­ca­lat­ed in­to a law­suit by Ram­dass, who first re­fused to record the fig­ures in the 2023 re­port. Through her at­tor­ney, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Ram­dass is claim­ing her rights were breached and her rep­u­ta­tion dam­aged by com­ments Ar­mour and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert have made about the im­passe. 

Al­though he did not wish to speak specif­i­cal­ly about the case with­out all the facts, Dook­er­an said this in­ci­dent has cre­at­ed a lack of con­fi­dence in the fi­nan­cial man­age­ment of the coun­try.  
He said the Con­sti­tu­tion al­ready out­lines the role and func­tion of each of­fice, name­ly that of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Min­istry of Fi­nance and Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.

How­ev­er, he be­lieves the of­fice­hold­ers may have mis­in­ter­pret­ed their roles, which caused “a col­li­sion of events” in the dis­charge of their du­ties. More­over, he said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is not nec­es­sary, as it would on­ly serve to lay blame when there needs to be greater clar­i­ty sur­round­ing the re­quire­ments of the par­ties in­volved. 

“Too many in­ves­ti­ga­tions have tak­en place in this coun­try that have led to no re­sults - in­ter­nal or ex­ter­nal - and what is more im­por­tant is not the in­ves­ti­ga­tions but the restora­tion of con­fi­dence in the con­duct of these in­sti­tu­tions,” Dook­er­an said. 

“So, I am not in­clined to (sup­port) any in­ves­ti­ga­tions as a way out. I think it is a mat­ter of as­ser­tions of the roles and I think this is what the coun­try would ben­e­fit from, much more than in­ves­ti­ga­tions,” he added.  

The for­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor al­so ex­pressed his be­lief that the in­ci­dent did not high­light a need for con­sti­tu­tion­al changes to pre­vent fur­ther oc­cur­rences.  

“I think it’s all en­shrined with­in the cur­rent con­sti­tu­tion­al struc­tures but for some rea­son, it fell apart and if one were to op­er­ate with­in the con­sti­tu­tion­al struc­ture, such a col­li­sion ought not to have hap­pened,” he said.  

He said while the pub­lic may be con­cerned about the al­leged un­der­stat­ed rev­enues, they may be look­ing to the AG’s of­fice for its role in the mat­ter.  

“I think they (the pub­lic) will be very con­cerned about an At­tor­ney Gen­er­al who says he does not have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect the in­sti­tu­tion (Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Of­fice) or to pro­vide le­gal ad­vice to the in­sti­tu­tion. I think there’s a col­li­sion of events that took place, not a con­flict of in­ter­est,” he said. 

At a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, Ar­mour re­it­er­at­ed that he re­ceived a let­ter from the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al dat­ed April 17 ask­ing for an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Sec­tions 24 and 25 of the Ex­che­quer and Au­dit Act to de­ter­mine if her of­fice is re­quired to con­sid­er the amend­ed bud­get state­ments pre­sent­ed by the Min­istry of Fi­nance to cor­rect the ac­counts that were re­called.  

Ar­mour said he told Ram­dass he was al­ready ad­vis­ing the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance on the mat­ter, and sug­gest­ed that he would pay for ex­ter­nal le­gal ad­vice. 

As the is­sue un­fold­ed this week, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar called the Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed probe led by High Court Jus­tice David Har­ris “a sham” and rec­om­mend­ed that the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion be en­gaged to re­solve the mat­ter. How­ev­er, Im­bert re­tort­ed that it was mere­ly an in­ter­nal probe of the mat­ter.


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