Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Trustees of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) were yes­ter­day served with court doc­u­ments as a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the fund­ing of the par­ty’s head­quar­ters con­tin­ues.

Last month, High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed grant­ed a Pre­lim­i­nary Un­ex­plained Wealth Or­der re­quir­ing the par­ty, through its trustees, to dis­close how the mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar project was fi­nanced.

The or­der was sought by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) un­der the Civ­il As­set Re­cov­ery and Man­age­ment and Un­ex­plained Wealth Act, leg­is­la­tion in­tro­duced by the PNM while it was in gov­ern­ment in 2019.

While in Op­po­si­tion, mem­bers of the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, re­peat­ed­ly ques­tioned the fi­nanc­ing of the project, al­leg­ing it was fund­ed with il­lic­it­ly ob­tained mon­ey.

Yes­ter­day, short­ly be­fore 2 p.m., two po­lice of­fi­cers vis­it­ed the PNM’s Port of Spain head­quar­ters to serve the doc­u­ments.

Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader San­jiv Bood­hu, who was present when the doc­u­ments were served on one of the par­ty’s trustees, whom he de­clined to iden­ti­fy, said he did not read the doc­u­ments.

Guardian Me­dia ob­served for­mer PNM vice-chair­man Robert Le Hunte at Bal­isi­er House; how­ev­er, Bood­hu said Le Hunte was not one of the trustees.

Last month, PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings was served with a court or­der com­pelling the par­ty to pro­vide fi­nan­cial and oth­er records to ex­plain the fund­ing of the mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar con­struc­tion of Bal­isi­er House

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed both PNM leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and par­ty chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les for com­ment on the mat­ter. Up to press time, nei­ther had re­spond­ed.