SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says the wire trans­fer mat­ter link­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to A&V Drilling Com­pa­ny is far from over.

This is be­cause Mooni­lal says it is still the sub­ject of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Fraud Squad al­though Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith dis­closed yes­ter­day that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) had closed the case.

At yes­ter­day’s TTPS’ week­ly press brief­ing Grif­fith said the case had been closed for now as af­ter seek­ing the as­sis­tance of stake­hold­ers in the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit and for­eign in­ves­ti­ga­tion units, the TTPS could not find ev­i­dence to prove Mooni­lal’s claim.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the 2018 bud­get de­bate, Mooni­lal had claimed to have doc­u­ments that al­leged­ly linked Row­ley to a bank trans­ac­tion in Flori­da that in­volved the AV Drilling com­pa­ny.

Row­ley de­nied Mooni­lal’s claim the, de­scrib­ing it as a “mon­strous lie” and re­ferred the mat­ter to the po­lice for a probe. The PM al­so took le­gal ac­tion against Mooni­lal for his state­ments.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Mooni­lal said at no time did he raise in Par­lia­ment an is­sue of a “bank ac­count” which the po­lice in­ves­ti­gat­ed, dis­cov­ered to be un­true and closed the case.

“I had nev­er raised an is­sue of a bank ac­count, he (Row­ley) did and I think he re­port­ed him­self to the po­lice.”

Mooni­lal said what he raised and re­port­ed to the Fraud Squad was an is­sue in­volv­ing a wire trans­fer, which is still un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He said the wire trans­fer was linked to lawyer David Gold­berg in Wash­ing­ton DC.

“And to my knowl­edge, the Fraud Squad is still in­ves­ti­gat­ing that be­cause they are in touch with me. The Fraud Squad in­ves­ti­ga­tion is still on­go­ing on a wire trans­fer mat­ter, not a bank ac­count mat­ter,” he said, adding he had com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the head of the Fraud Squad last month.

“I am ac­tu­al­ly called up­on to sign a state­ment as we speak from the Fraud Squad,” he said.

“I can meet Fraud Squad at the of­fice of my lawyer Is­rael Khan and I am pre­pared to sign. But my part of it is far from over.”

He said the po­lice will have to use the Mu­tu­al Treaty As­sis­tance leg­is­la­tion re­gard­ing the wire trans­fer mat­ter.

Re­gard­ing the Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca case, which the po­lice al­so said yes­ter­day had been closed, Mooni­lal said this “speaks vol­umes” be­cause “the PNM made it a plat­form is­sue for four and a half years to dis­tract from their in­com­pe­tence.”

He said the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty spent tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey and Par­lia­men­tary time to ad­dress the is­sue which has now back­fired on the Gov­ern­ment.

“This is dis­turb­ing. It was a com­plete witch­hunt and they did not find a witch. The PNM was able to fool in­tel­li­gent peo­ple,” he said, adding the UNC was now vin­di­cat­ed.