Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says he will meet with Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­gard­ing her con­cerns about the in­tegri­ty of In­di­an busi­ness­man Naveen Jin­dal, but on­ly if she first­ly deals with the crim­i­nal charges fac­ing her chief whip, David Lee.

But fir­ing back im­me­di­ate­ly, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it is now clear the Prime Min­is­ter has been caught in a scan­dal and is us­ing her Pointe-a-Pierre MP as a dis­trac­tion.

Both the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) have crit­i­cised the Prime Min­is­ter’s meet­ing with Jin­dal on the Petrotrin re­fin­ery at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre on June 17.

The UNC leader high­light­ed the crim­i­nal charges Jin­dal is bat­tling in In­dia and ques­tioned how the PM could be un­aware of this.

Mean­while, the OW­TU claimed Dr Row­ley’s meet­ing with Jin­dal was a breach of the pro­cure­ment laws in light of the al­le­ga­tions against the In­di­an busi­ness­man, who is chair­man of Jin­dal Steel and Pow­er Ltd.

Re­spond­ing briefly to their as­ser­tions fol­low­ing his closed-door Break­fast with the Prime Min­is­ter at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, the Prime Min­is­ter said, “You seem to have a lot of time to waste on Mr Ro­get and the Op­po­si­tion Leader.”

Paus­ing by his ve­hi­cle, Row­ley then said, “I will en­sure that the Op­po­si­tion Leader does not un­der­mine and de­rail what the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go is do­ing for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Pressed fur­ther for a re­sponse, par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­spect to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s con­cern that he, as Prime Min­is­ter, should have been aware of Jin­dal’s run-in with In­di­an au­thor­i­ties, Row­ley said, “If she is so in­ter­est­ed in Mr Jin­dal’s charges, I would say, deal with David Lee’s charges first and then I will talk to her about Jin­dal’s charges af­ter.”

The Prime Min­is­ter did not take any more ques­tions and left with his se­cu­ri­ty de­tail.

Lee was charged with one count of fraud­u­lent­ly ob­tain­ing tax ex­emp­tions on the pur­chase of a ve­hi­cle and one count of con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud the State in Sep­tem­ber 2022. He was charged by an of­fi­cer from the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch (FIB) and was grant­ed $1 mil­lion bail to cov­er both charges af­ter he ap­peared in court.

Con­tact­ed on Row­ley’s soon af­ter, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Guardian Me­dia, “David Lee does not own the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery. That is owned by the tax­pay­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

On June 21, when ap­proached with a sim­i­lar ques­tion re­gard­ing Mr Jin­dal’s charges, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said, “What I find iron­ic is some of the very peo­ple I sit across the aisle from in Par­lia­ment are on bail and sub­ject to crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions, so it is quite iron­ic to hear some of those com­ments. We have one who is out on $1 mil­lion bail, he is al­ways one who likes to com­ment on en­er­gy mat­ters.”

Al­so ref­er­enc­ing that in­ter­view, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “Row­ley and Young have been caught in a scan­dalous arrange­ment and are now des­per­ate to de­flect.”

She said there is no need for the Prime Min­is­ter to speak with her per­son­al­ly, as the on­ly peo­ple he owes an ex­pla­na­tion to are cit­i­zens of this coun­try.

“He has to ex­plain why he wants to give a for­eign­er who is on cor­rup­tion and mon­ey laun­der­ing charges the re­fin­ery. He has to ex­plain how they have been meet­ing Jin­dal for over 15 months but did not know about his Venezue­lan deal­ings,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar then re­it­er­at­ed what she said on Mon­day, where she said, “the Row­ley Gov­ern­ment should tell the coun­try that a Jin­dal-PDVSA oil deal was reached in Cara­cas in mid-April 2024, hours be­fore the US an­nounced the im­mi­nent reim­po­si­tion of sanc­tions and if the Venezue­lan oil from this deal will be bound for Pointe-a-Pierre af­ter Jin­dal is gift­ed the re­fin­ery.”

She added, “Why did Row­ley and Young not tell the coun­try that the Gov­ern­ment was meet­ing with Jin­dal since last year, March 2023? Why did they pre­tend that they first met him last week due to Row­ley’s trip to In­dia in May 2024? This en­tire scan­dal is a cor­rupt cook-up be­tween the Maduro’s and Row­ley’s gov­ern­ments to move and process Venezuela oil that is un­der US sanc­tions.”

On Tues­day, Min­is­ter Young re­spond­ed to some of those claims, say­ing he has not had any dis­cus­sions with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment per­tain­ing to any arrange­ments they may have with Jin­dal’s com­pa­nies.

He al­so said it was no se­cret he had met with Jin­dal be­fore.

“The fact that the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries’ web­site has a re­lease stat­ing that I met with Mr Naveen Jin­dal in March of 2023 is tes­ti­mo­ny to this,” he added via a state­ment post­ed to so­cial me­dia.

Ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia re­ports, in 2013, In­dia’s Cen­tral Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion (CBI) brought a charge against Jin­dal and for­mer Coal Min­is­ter Dasari Rao for al­leged­ly mis­al­lo­cat­ing min­ing rights.

In­di­an au­thor­i­ties claimed that kick­backs were paid by Jin­dal to then-min­is­ter Rao in ex­change for min­ing rights for coal.

Ef­forts to reach Jin­dal for a com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.