A tele­vi­sion host has re­quest­ed the dis­clo­sure of records re­lat­ed to mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax ex­emp­tions, State-fund­ed hous­ing, and med­ical ex­pens­es claimed by mem­bers of the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment.

Naz­im Ish­mael made the re­quest in a le­gal let­ter sent by his lawyer Richard Jag­gasar to the Min­istry of Fi­nance on Mon­day.

In the cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Jag­gasar claimed that Ish­mael, whose broth­er is so­cial ac­tivist and busi­ness­man In­shan Ish­mael, first made a re­quest un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) on April 2.

He ad­mit­ted that the re­quest, which was strict­ly re­lat­ed to mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax ex­emp­tions for “pub­lic of­fi­cials” be­tween 2015 and this year, was de­nied by the min­istry for be­ing too broad.

While Jag­gasar sug­gest­ed that the min­istry erred in its re­sponse, he sought to lim­it the re­quest to for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and sen­a­tors, in­clud­ing for­mer prime min­is­ters Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Stu­art Young, and cur­rent Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son.

Jag­gasar al­so ex­tend­ed the re­quest to in­clude in­for­ma­tion on whether the named of­fi­cials re­ceived State-fund­ed hous­ing and had their med­ical fees paid by the State, as well as of­fi­cial pol­i­cy doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to both.

He not­ed that mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax ex­emp­tions and State-fund­ed hous­ing were raised by new­ly elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, while ad­dress­ing a post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing last week.

He al­so sought to ex­plain why Ish­mael was seek­ing in­for­ma­tion on med­ical fees.

“I am in­struct­ed that on more than one oc­ca­sion some of the mem­bers of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion caused to be paid med­ical bills in­curred at pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions for tests, op­er­a­tions and ex­am­i­na­tions which are avail­able in the pub­lic health care sys­tem,” Jag­gasar said.

Re­fer­ring to sec­tion 35 of the FOIA, Jag­gasar not­ed that even if some of the in­for­ma­tion is ex­empt from dis­clo­sure, the min­istry had a du­ty to con­sid­er whether dis­clo­sure is war­rant­ed in the pub­lic in­ter­est.

“Full and frank dis­clo­sure would en­force pub­lic con­fi­dence in the au­thor­i­ty,” Jag­gasar said.

“You are al­so re­mind­ed that this ac­cess de­ci­sion must be an un­equiv­o­cal de­ci­sion as to whether ac­cess is grant­ed or not,” he added.

Jag­gasar gave the min­istry 30 days to re­spond be­fore he filed a law­suit on Ish­mael’s be­half.