DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Un­both­ered by the threat of le­gal ac­tion by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith says he’s look­ing for­ward to his day in court.

Row­ley called Grif­fith “a dan­ger­ous liar” and promised to send doc­u­ments to his lawyers yes­ter­day to vin­di­cate him­self. He was speak­ing to sup­port­ers of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) at the 51st an­nu­al PNM San Fer­nan­do West con­stituen­cy con­fer­ence at San Fer­nan­do City Hall over the week­end. He said re­cent com­ments by the for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er could in­flu­ence cas­es such as Life­s­port, Es­tate Man­age­ment and De­vel­op­ment Co Ltd and the Vin­cent Nel­son mat­ter.

“He is giv­ing a de­fence and an ar­gu­ment in the court by the de­fence lawyers for all these peo­ple, that the pros­e­cu­tion by the Trinidad and To­ba­go po­lice is po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed,” PM Row­ley said.

“When they pub­lish it abroad (it) is the Prime Min­is­ter of the coun­try who give the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice mon­ey to go af­ter these poor in­no­cent peo­ple,” he added.

Unit­ed King­dom firm Ed­monds Mar­shall Ma­hon had been con­tract­ed by the TTPS to pro­vide sup­port and train­ing to the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau (ACIB) as they in­ves­ti­gat­ed those mat­ters. Grif­fith had been the com­mis­sion­er of po­lice while the firm pro­vid­ed that aid.

The Prime Min­is­ter said the re­quest for fund­ing for these cas­es would have been made by the TTPS to the Gov­ern­ment. The Prime Min­is­ter said he had lit­tle con­nec­tion to these in­ves­ti­ga­tions be­ing prompt­ed.

“I am mak­ing this very clear that as Prime Min­is­ter of this coun­try, I have had ab­solute­ly no per­son­al in­struc­tion or in­volve­ment in this mat­ter. This is a mat­ter be­tween the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the Cab­i­net where the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance re­sides."

Grif­fith first made the al­le­ga­tion in 2022, and on March 22 of that year, Dr Row­ley called him ‘a de­ranged imp’ for say­ing the State spent $35 mil­lion to go af­ter Op­po­si­tion MPs for cor­rup­tion through UK law firm, Ed­monds Mar­shall McMa­hon (EMM).

Dr Row­ley stat­ed that the Fi­nance Min­is­ter ap­proved US$18 mil­lion in 2021 to pur­sue white-col­lar crime, as ev­i­denced by a Cab­i­net note. He ex­plained that civ­il claims ex­ceed­ed $400 mil­lion, and there were over $1 bil­lion in con­trac­tor claims against EM­BD as he jus­ti­fied the fig­ure.

How­ev­er, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Grif­fith dou­bled down on his claim that an­gered the Prime Min­is­ter, say­ing he had all the ev­i­dence to de­fend him­self against a defama­tion law­suit.

“I can­not wait ... Can we please fast-for­ward this to go to court so I could bring out all the in­for­ma­tion, all the ev­i­dence, to show to the coun­try the re­al Kei­th Row­ley?

“I shud­der to think that what the Prime Min­is­ter is try­ing to do is throw his oth­er fel­low min­is­ters un­der the bus be­cause, trust me, the in­for­ma­tion that I have is very long, very dis­tin­guished and it is not just my­self. We have heads of the de­part­ments in the po­lice ser­vice have all the in­for­ma­tion, we have all the mes­sages,” he claimed.

The for­mer top cop sought to clar­i­fy that he was not op­posed to in­ves­ti­gat­ing any politi­cian, but he was to­tal­ly against po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

“I had to run a po­lice ser­vice with 7,000 of­fi­cers, 110 sta­tions, 1,700 ve­hi­cles with­out a cent and have to do every­thing on cred­it. But, every time that this UK firm will call and say they’re drop­ping tools be­cause they have not been paid, im­me­di­ate­ly min­is­ters will be con­tact­ing me, per­ma­nent sec­re­taries will be con­tact­ing my heads and say­ing ‘ok, we are send­ing the mon­ey now to you’. Wouldn’t the coun­try be a lit­tle con­cerned about this?

“And this is not to say that we do not want to in­ves­ti­gate these mat­ters, but it seems that there was a vest­ed in­ter­est specif­i­cal­ly to these mat­ters ...”

Ex­plain­ing why he nev­er flagged these con­cerns while com­mis­sion­er, Grif­fith said it was not an il­le­gal act but an un­eth­i­cal one.

“It was un­eth­i­cal, but this is what politi­cians do. This is not in any way go­ing to af­fect the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. It is to ex­pose the Gov­ern­ment’s hypocrisy, dou­ble stan­dard and bias in that when we are ask­ing to get funds to have ve­hi­cles, to have drones, to have tech­nol­o­gy for tasers, pep­per spray, change the uni­form, im­prove the train­ing, im­prove cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing, mak­ing sure that we have dash­board cam­eras on the ve­hi­cles, the tech­nol­o­gy to put an end to kid­nap­ping, home in­va­sion, they didn’t have mon­ey but when the UK firm calls ...”

He said Row­ley must state who draft­ed the Cab­i­net note, sent him to Lon­don, and ap­proved fund­ing for EMM.