Mark Bas­sant

A team of po­lice of­fi­cers en­tered the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion head­quar­ters on Aber­crom­by Street, in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day linked pos­si­bly to two on­go­ing po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia that the team of of­fi­cers, who had a doc­u­ment in their pos­ses­sion, made checks with the re­cep­tion be­fore lat­er go­ing up to an­oth­er floor of the build­ing.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the of­fi­cers at­tached to the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau(ACIB) con­duct­ed a brief search of some of the of­fices on that floor but did not seize any­thing.

PSA Pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke was not at the of­fice when the search was con­duct­ed short­ly af­ter 10.20 am.

One week ago, an in­ves­ti­ga­tion on CNC3’s Un­spun re­vealed that Duke had re­ceived a half a mil­lion-dol­lar pen­sion pay­ment from the PSA in 2019.

Duke had an­nounced he was re­sign­ing from the PSA at that time– but lat­er re­neged on that promise and ran for an­oth­er term as pres­i­dent.

He won that con­tentious elec­tion in which sev­er­al of the con­test­ing par­ties have now filed a court ac­tion sur­round­ing the elec­tions.

The pen­sion pay­ment, ac­cord­ing to the PSA Act Sec­tion 102, in­di­cates that an of­fi­cer of the PSA can on­ly re­ceive their pen­sion or any oth­er form of pay­ment when they re­mit of­fice. But Duke nev­er did.

Fol­low­ing the Un­spun in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Duke, in a video on Mon­day on­line, ad­mit­ted to tak­ing the mon­ey.

“I told my peo­ple I am look­ing to re­sign, but you know what they have to give me my pen­sion af­ter I got my pen­sion a man can change his mind eh. I de­cid­ed I will change my mind and I did that with­out any apol­o­gy,” Duke had said then.

Duke had said dur­ing the on­line stream that he was not afraid of any po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion and said that his lawyers were ready and wait­ing.

“I want­ed my mon­ey. I got my mon­ey, and they say it is not my mon­ey. Well Fraud Squad have to come to me, and I tell them when they come, step prop­er­ly. Bring all yuh case and I will deal with that.”

An on­go­ing po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to WASA may have prompt­ed the search, but sources strong­ly be­lieve it was more close­ly re­lat­ed to the pen­sion pay­ment.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia that Duke con­tact­ed his lawyers some­time yes­ter­day and be­lieve it may have been con­nect­ed to the po­lice search yes­ter­day.