While they have con­firmed that there is no on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the ac­tiv­i­ties of an al­leged Trinida­di­an-born, UK-based gang­ster, se­nior po­lice say they are pay­ing at­ten­tion to the mat­ter, giv­en the se­ri­ous­ness of the al­le­ga­tions be­ing made.

On Sun­day, a me­dia re­port claimed that a high-rank­ing Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial was one of two peo­ple linked to a com­pa­ny formed in the UK in Sep­tem­ber 2023, and that the oth­er di­rec­tor was lat­er al­leged­ly dis­cov­ered to have in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal ties across the Unit­ed States, the Caribbean, and Eu­rope.

In a re­lease on Mon­day, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Adri­an Leonce con­firmed he had set up an en­gi­neer­ing and con­struc­tion busi­ness in the UK with an in­di­vid­ual, but con­tend­ed he ter­mi­nat­ed the com­pa­ny and ties with the man af­ter learn­ing he was fac­ing a crim­i­nal probe in Ju­ly 2024.

Leonce de­nied any wrong­do­ing, say­ing the on­ly con­nec­tion be­tween him­self and the man was for the pur­pos­es of reg­is­ter­ing the busi­ness.

The me­dia re­port claimed that the gang­ster, who has lived in Britain for years, was in­volved in var­i­ous crimes, in­clud­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing and arms traf­fick­ing from the US to the Caribbean, in­clud­ing T&T.

Asked for a com­ment on the mat­ter at yes­ter­day’s TTPS me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain, DCP Curt Si­mon said there were no in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the mat­ter.

Pressed on whether an in­ves­ti­ga­tion would be like­ly, Si­mon on­ly not­ed that the mat­ter was not go­ing un­no­ticed.

“You have to de­ter­mine first if there is a crime. So, we are see­ing in­sti­tu­tions be­ing called and per­sons be­ing giv­en per­haps some sort of la­bels as to who might be some crime boss and all that sort of thing. All these things re­al­ly do need to be nec­es­sar­i­ly ver­i­fied and then you need to know if there is an of­fence at all,” Si­mon said.

“So, we would not tell the pub­lic that it does not con­cern us, but we are not go­ing to promise the pub­lic right now, from what is be­ing seen and said, that there is go­ing to be an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. What we can say is we con­sid­er our­self a very re­spon­si­ble en­ti­ty and there is some­thing out there in the pub­lic and we are look­ing at it.”

One of­fi­cer as­signed to an in­ves­tiga­tive unit told Guardian Me­dia that a search of the TTPS data­base showed there were no records of the pur­port­ed gang­ster be­ing ar­rest­ed or charged for any crimes in T&T.

The source con­firmed that the on­ly en­tries un­der the man’s name were three stop-and-search ex­er­cis­es con­duct­ed in 2009, 2014 and 2016, all in Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go.

Mean­while, re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions via email yes­ter­day, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the British Met­ro­pol­i­tan Po­lice said they could not ver­i­fy if the man was the sub­ject of any in­ves­ti­ga­tions from their agency, as ad­di­tion­al de­tails would be need­ed for a com­pre­hen­sive search to con­firm whether he was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

“The way we work is that we need a time/date/lo­ca­tion and na­ture of crime to be able to search our sys­tems; we don’t run search­es on named in­di­vid­u­als who may form part of our in­ves­ti­ga­tions,” the of­fi­cial said.

The spokesper­son added that the British Met­ro­pol­i­tan Po­lice on­ly has purview over Lon­don, where­as oth­er British law en­force­ment bod­ies like the Na­tion­al Crime Agency may have ju­ris­dic­tion over oth­er re­gions of Eng­land.

Asked if the British Met­ro­pol­i­tan Po­lice could pro­vide any as­sur­ance that Trinida­di­an na­tion­als in­volved in crime in the UK would be dealt with, the spokesper­son said, “It does not mat­ter where you come from, we po­lice with­out fear nor favour and any al­le­ga­tions of crim­i­nal­i­ty will be as­sessed and in­ves­ti­gat­ed with those re­spon­si­ble put be­fore the courts.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Mar­vin Gon­za­les and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land for com­ment but was un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.

In a me­dia re­lease, Op­po­si­tion MP and shad­ow min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Roodal Mooni­lal ac­cused Leonce of not fol­low­ing due dili­gence by “vet­ting” the man, whom he de­scribed as a “great in­ter­est” to law en­force­ment agen­cies across dif­fer­ent ter­ri­to­ries.

Mooni­lal added that it was “dis­turb­ing” that Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young had ap­point­ed some­one to of­fice who un­der­took busi­ness arrange­ments with such peo­ple.

“Mr Leonce’s ac­tions re­veal an alarm­ing lack of due care and at­ten­tion and raise con­cerns about whether he has tak­en that ab­sence of stan­dard and com­pe­tence to his min­is­te­r­i­al of­fice.

“Now that Mr Leonce has iden­ti­fied him­self as the sub­ject of my ex­pose, he should in­di­cate whether he has de­clared his busi­ness ven­tures to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, as re­quired by law. Mr Leonce has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­vide clar­i­ty on these is­sues.”

Con­tact­ed on Mon­day about the is­sue, In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion chair­man Hay­den Git­tens said he was not aware if Leonce had in fact de­clared that he had an in­ter­est in a UK com­pa­ny. How­ev­er, he said he pre­ferred not to com­ment di­rect­ly on those mat­ters.

Git­tens ex­plained, though, that there is noth­ing pre­vent­ing a gov­ern­ment mem­ber from open­ing a busi­ness or be­com­ing a di­rec­tor of a busi­ness, but said there is a dis­clo­sure re­quire­ment as part of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act.

“The form B re­quires a dis­clo­sure if you have that in­ter­est, which may or may not cre­ate a con­flict sit­u­a­tion. It would not be a breach sim­ply open­ing the busi­ness or ac­count. If you do not de­clare, then a per­son would be in con­tra­ven­tion of the act.”