DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has crit­i­cised the Op­po­si­tion for chal­leng­ing the de­ci­sion of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to close its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to him over dis­clo­sure of the pur­chase of a town­house in To­ba­go. 

In a post on his Face­book page, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Row­ley took aim at a le­gal threat made by so­cial and po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj to­ward the Com­mis­sion, last week.  

Row­ley, who did not re­fer to Ma­haraj di­rect­ly, said: “Imag­ine the UNC is the undis­put­ed cham­pi­ons of cor­rup­tion but they are tak­ing is­sue with the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion which in­ves­ti­gat­ed and could find no ev­i­dence of cor­rup­tion.

“In oth­er words, they are an­gry be­cause the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion was un­able to con­firm their lies,” he added, as he ref­er­enced sev­er­al me­dia re­ports over his de­c­la­ra­tion to the com­mis­sion over the town­house pur­chase.  

Ma­haraj’s lawyers made the threat in the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to the com­mis­sion’s reg­is­trar, last Thurs­day. 

Ma­haraj’s pro­posed le­gal ac­tion is re­lat­ed to a com­plaint made by Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein to the com­mis­sion in De­cem­ber 2021 over Row­ley and his wife pur­chas­ing the town­house at In­ez Gate, a res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment lo­cat­ed at Shir­van Road in To­ba­go. 

Al­though Ho­sein claimed that the town­house was val­ued at $1,689,000, Row­ley and his wife pur­chased it for $1.2 mil­lion. 

Ho­sein ques­tioned why Row­ley did not in­clude the prop­er­ty in his Reg­is­ter of In­ter­est Form for 2019, which was sub­mit­ted in De­cem­ber 2020. 

Un­der the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act (IPLA), pub­lic of­fi­cials are re­quired to sub­mit the form as well as an of­fi­cial De­c­la­ra­tion of In­ter­ests, As­sets, and Li­a­bil­i­ties Form. Mem­bers of the pub­lic can in­spect the in­ter­est reg­is­tra­tion form but the de­c­la­ra­tion form is con­fi­den­tial. 

Ho­sein claimed that Row­ley made a false en­try in his de­c­la­ra­tion form as he list­ed the price that was paid for the prop­er­ty and not its ac­tu­al val­ue. 

Ho­sein al­so point­ed out that un­der Sec­tion 27 of the leg­is­la­tion, Row­ley was re­quired to de­clare the al­leged dis­count on the prop­er­ty as a per­son­al gift but failed to do so. 

In its of­fi­cial re­sponse to Ho­sein, which was sent on June 29 and was at­tached to Ma­haraj’s le­gal cor­re­spon­dence, the com­mis­sion sought to ad­dress the spe­cif­ic com­plaints made against Row­ley and ex­plained its de­ci­sion to not con­tin­ue the in­ves­ti­ga­tion based on in­suf­fi­cient grounds. 

Deal­ing with Row­ley’s in­ter­est reg­is­tra­tion form, the com­mis­sion ad­mit­ted that Row­ley omit­ted to in­clude the town­house pur­chase. How­ev­er, it not­ed that such an omis­sion did not con­sti­tute a crim­i­nal of­fence un­der the IPLA. 

Ad­dress­ing the val­ue of the town­house in the de­c­la­ra­tion form, the com­mis­sion said that Row­ley had to “know­ing­ly” make a false de­c­la­ra­tion to con­sti­tute an of­fence. 

“How­ev­er, based on the ev­i­dence ob­tained, the Com­mis­sion is of the view that Dr Row­ley did not know­ing­ly pro­vide false in­for­ma­tion in his de­c­la­ra­tion,” it said. 

In terms of the dis­count on the town­house, the com­mis­sion stat­ed that the ev­i­dence it ob­tained did not re­veal that the dis­count was con­nect­ed di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly to the per­for­mance of his of­fi­cial du­ties. 

“Fur­ther, the ev­i­dence re­trieved al­so did not show that the said dis­count was re­ceived as an in­ci­dent of the pro­to­col and so­cial oblig­a­tions that nor­mal­ly ac­com­pa­ny the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of his of­fice,” it said. 

“Re­sul­tant­ly, the com­mis­sion opines that he was not ob­lig­at­ed to file a state­ment with his de­c­la­ra­tion con­tain­ing par­tic­u­lars as it re­lat­ed to the said dis­count in the cir­cum­stances,” it added. 

In­ves­ti­ga­tion

wor­ries ac­tivist

In his le­gal cor­re­spon­dence, Ma­haraj’s lawyer Vishaal Siewsaran, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, claimed that his client, who has been fol­low­ing the mat­ter since it was first raised, is con­cerned with the out­come of the com­mis­sion’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion. 

“There is a strong pri­ma fa­cie case of po­lit­i­cal cor­rup­tion when one con­sid­ers the fact that high-pro­file Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sup­port­ers pur­chased town­hous­es in the same de­vel­op­ment at sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er prices there­by giv­ing rise to the in­fer­ence of an in­di­rect sub­sidy to low­er the pur­chase price for Dr Row­ley,” Siewsaran said. 

Deal­ing with the com­mis­sion’s de­ci­sion on the in­ter­est reg­is­tra­tion form, Siewsaran sug­gest­ed that it was dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand why it did not con­sid­er Sec­tion 21 of the IPLA which makes it an of­fence to fail to fur­nish the com­mis­sion with fur­ther par­tic­u­lars. 

“The up­shot of the com­mis­sion’s po­si­tion in this mat­ter is that the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter can breach his oblig­a­tion to make full and frank dis­clo­sure in his state­ment, and there is no crim­i­nal penal­ty or sanc­tion for this il­le­gal ac­tion,” he said. 

“Why should any pub­lic of­fi­cial both­er to make full and frank dis­clo­sure if there is no con­se­quen­tial crim­i­nal penal­ty or sanc­tion?” he asked. 

He sug­gest­ed that it was “abun­dant­ly clear” that the com­mis­sion mis­in­ter­pret­ed the leg­is­la­tion. 

“It is a shock­ing ab­di­ca­tion of the Com­mis­sion’s statu­to­ry du­ty to act with­out fear or favour and in the pub­lic in­ter­est,” he said. 

“It al­so il­lus­trates the cri­sis of in­com­pe­tence that has en­gulfed the com­mis­sion which has been com­pound­ed by the ob­vi­ous po­lit­i­cal bias in this mat­ter,” he added. 

Stat­ing that the com­mis­sion’s han­dling of the com­plaints was ir­ra­tional and un­rea­son­able, Siewsaran said: “It is in de­fi­ance of log­ic, law, and com­mon sense.” 

He al­so point­ed out that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in­clud­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day and gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Fin­bar Gan­gar were pros­e­cut­ed by the com­mis­sion for sim­i­lar con­duct. 

“The gen­er­al ac­tions and/or con­duct of the State has cre­at­ed a fer­tile ground for the pub­lic per­cep­tion that there is an en­trenched po­lit­i­cal bias against the UNC by in­sti­tu­tions of the State that are sup­posed to be in­de­pen­dent,” he said. 

In the let­ter, Siewsaran called on the com­mis­sion to dis­close de­tails about the in­ves­ti­ga­tor and the rec­om­men­da­tions made by them at the con­clu­sion of the probe. 

The com­mis­sion was giv­en un­til next Thurs­day to re­scind its de­ci­sion and re­open its in­ves­ti­ga­tion, oth­er­wise, Ma­haraj would file his ju­di­cial re­view law­suit against it. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the com­mis­sion re­spond­ed last Fri­day stat­ing that the let­ter was re­ceiv­ing its at­ten­tion and a re­sponse would be is­sued in due course.