Gail Alexan­der

With­draw your state­ment Wat­son.

The For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry has called on PDP leader Wat­son Duke to with­draw un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed, er­ro­neous, li­bel­lous ac­cu­sa­tions against Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley about the al­leged “po­ten­tial in­ves­ti­ga­tion” of Row­ley by the US.

The min­istry, which made the call on Thurs­day, stat­ed, “At the out­set, Mr Duke may wish to with­draw his state­ment about in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter, which is er­ro­neous, li­bel­lous and no doubt seeps from a well of ig­no­rance of the in­ter­ac­tion to which he re­ferred and of mat­ters of in­ter­na­tion­al en­gage­ment.

“In his fa­mil­iar dis­play of dis­re­gard of facts, he lev­elled un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed ac­cu­sa­tions against Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley on mat­ters of crit­i­cal im­por­tance to T&T.”

The min­istry not­ed that Duke’s claims on Tues­day co­in­cid­ed with Row­ley’s cur­rent of­fi­cial vis­it to Wash­ing­ton to dis­cuss is­sues, in­clud­ing de-risk­ing and cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing.

Last week, af­ter a Bar­ba­dos trip where Row­ley and oth­er Cari­com lead­ers met a US team head­ed by Con­gress­woman Max­ine Wa­ters on de­risk­ing and cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing, Row­ley said the meet­ing re­sult­ed in a com­mit­ment to have US Con­gres­sion­al hear­ings to hear Cari­com’s com­plaints on the is­sue in the near fu­ture. Row­ley had not­ed that there were reser­va­tions about re­gion­al banks be­ing in­volved in mon­ey laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing

How­ev­er, Duke sub­se­quent­ly al­leged on Tues­day that Row­ley was “un­der a po­ten­tial US Con­gres­sion­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

But on Thurs­day, the For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry stat­ed, “Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley has been par­ty to dis­cus­sions with Con­gress­woman Wa­ters since 2019. The Round­table dis­cus­sion on de-risk­ing and cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing in Bar­ba­dos on 20th April fol­lows a se­ries of high-lev­el meet­ings be­tween Cari­com and Wa­ters, based on Cari­com lead­ers’ de­ci­sion to ad­dress the is­sue with the Eu­ro­pean Union and US.

“The facts of the Prime Min­is­ter’s ac­tive and re­spon­si­ble ad­vo­ca­cy on this mat­ter have been pub­lic – the Prime Min­is­ter met Con­gress­woman Wa­ters dur­ing a vis­it to Wash­ing­ton in 2019 when the harm­ful im­pact on our re­gion of de-risk­ing and cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing was raised by the Prime Min­is­ter. This en­gage­ment was one of the im­por­tant in­ter­ac­tions be­tween the two sides for the fos­ter­ing of agree­ment on the part of the US to re­view the is­sues sur­round­ing the mat­ter.”

It added, “Dur­ing T&T’s chair­man­ship of Cari­com, the Prime Min­is­ter met Con­gress­woman Wa­ters in March 2021, where de-risk­ing and cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing was the pri­or­i­ty, with the Prime Min­is­ter rep­re­sent­ing the re­gion’s views on the mat­ter.

“Due, in part, to his ac­tive in­volve­ment in treat­ing with this re­gion­al is­sue since 2019, the Prime Min­is­ter was in­vit­ed to the Bar­ba­dos Round­table by Bar­ba­dos’ Prime Min­is­ter.”

The min­istry said that meet­ing re­sult­ed in the fol­low­ing out­comes which are ben­e­fi­cial to the re­gion and T&T – agree­ment on a US Con­gres­sion­al Hear­ing on the im­pact of de-risk­ing and cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing; cre­ation of an an­nu­al Caribbean-US Bank­ing Fo­rum; pro­pos­al to pur­sue a fea­si­bil­i­ty study for a pi­lot project for a Con­sor­tium Bank Mod­el and a pro­pos­al to de­vel­op an Ex­am­in­er Train­ing Acad­e­my in the US.