RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is call­ing on the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions to in­ves­ti­gate the pur­chase of a town­house by a rel­a­tive of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Speak­ing at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ ral­ly yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bissessr said the town­house was sold for $1.2 mil­lion last Au­gust. She said the three-bed­room town­house was first sold for $1.6 mil­lion on Sep­tem­ber 13, 2019 and then resold to Dr Row­ley’s rel­a­tive in Au­gust for $400,000 less than the first pur­chase price. Be­cause of this, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the sale has been deemed “sus­pi­cious.”

“Ac­cord­ing to the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit, Guid­ance Note on Sus­pi­cious Trans­ac­tion/Ac­tiv­i­ty Re­port­ing Stan­dards (Up­dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 2019) at page 10, it states that a red flag which points to mon­ey laun­der­ing is where a client wants to re­sell a prop­er­ty short­ly af­ter pur­chase at a sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent price with­out cor­re­spond­ing changes in mar­ket val­ues in the same area,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar quot­ed.

She said she was doubt­ful that the town­house would “ex­ces­sive­ly de­pre­ci­ate by $400,000 in such a short space of time, while the oth­ers in the same de­vel­op­ment, some right next to this town­house, in­creased in val­ue.” 

 “This mat­ter must at­tract the full at­ten­tion of the DPP and the po­lice. We will en­sure that the mat­ter is re­ferred for a full and com­plete in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” she added. 

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley re­cent­ly ad­dressed the is­sue of his pur­chase of a town­house at In­ez Gate in To­ba­go from busi­ness­man Al­lan Warn­er, say­ing it was done above board and was pur­chased with the sav­ings of him­self and his wife Sharon Clarke-Row­ley.

His daugh­ter al­so pur­chased a town­house in the same de­vel­op­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so re­newed her call for a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the mis­man­age­ment of COVID-19, say­ing too many peo­ple were dy­ing.

She said bil­lions have been spent on the pan­dem­ic yet T&T on­ly had 52 In­ten­sive Care Unit beds for a pop­u­la­tion that is over 1.3 mil­lion.

“The ICUs are death traps. Peo­ple are say­ing if they go there the on­ly time they are com­ing out is in a sealed cof­fin,” she said.

Send­ing a mes­sage to Row­ley, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “We are reg­is­ter­ing the most num­ber of deaths. Are you proud of that? Peo­ple are dy­ing like flies. You are send­ing peo­ple out there to give the most bor­ing press con­fer­ence. Bil­lions have been spent and lives are be­ing lost be­cause of your in­com­pe­tence and mis­man­age­ment.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said when her par­ty gets back in­to pow­er, she will pass leg­is­la­tion to en­sure that cit­i­zens will nev­er again be locked out of the coun­try be­cause of bor­der clo­sures.

“Where has the COVID mon­ey gone? Where is the trans­paren­cy? Some say $20 bil­lion was spent on COVID, an­oth­er says $5 bil­lion. We are see­ing deaths and cas­es in­creas­ing,” she added. 

Per­sad-Bisses­sar again re­it­er­at­ed that the Row­ley Gov­ern­ment had crashed the econ­o­my.

“Row­ley must ac­count. All these busi­ness­es have shut down. All of our peo­ple are suf­fer­ing. There is so much un­em­ploy­ment,” she added. 

Based on the UNC’s tab­u­la­tions, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there were over 112,000 peo­ple job­less in T&T.

“No amount of sta­tis­ti­cal con­man­ship can change what peo­ple are fac­ing on the ground. Four hun­dred and fifty per cent more job loss­es,” she said.