Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the sub­stan­tial for­eign ex­change pay­ment made to Ja­maican dance­hall artiste Adid­ja “Vy­bz Kar­tel” Palmer re­mains on­go­ing and ac­tive.

Con­tro­ver­sy erupt­ed ear­li­er this month when Kar­tel, along with sev­er­al oth­er artistes, with­drew from the May 31 One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, cit­ing un­re­solved con­trac­tu­al is­sues. Ac­cord­ing to the event’s or­gan­is­ers, Kar­tel re­ceived US$950,000 of US$1.3 mil­lion for his per­for­mance be­fore he de­cid­ed to pull out of the con­cert.

Tan­coo pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed that he was in­trigued by the amount of for­eign ex­change be­ing men­tioned in re­la­tion to pay­ment fees for artistes in­volved and or­dered an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Speak­ing out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was con­tin­u­ing.

“The Min­istry of Fi­nance is work­ing very close­ly with the po­lice ser­vice with re­gards to that in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin pre­vi­ous­ly told the me­dia that the mat­ter war­rant­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the fact that one of the main pro­mot­ers has a pend­ing crim­i­nal charge.

Mean­while, Tan­coo was asked to clar­i­fy Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to sus­pend the roll­out of its 2025 se­ries $100 poly­mer ban­knote.

In a state­ment is­sued last week, the Cen­tral Bank said it had in­struct­ed its con­tract­ed print­er to stop all work re­lat­ed to the print­ing, de­sign and prepa­ra­tion of the new notes “un­til fur­ther no­tice”.

The Cen­tral Bank had pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced that the up­dat­ed $100 note would en­ter pub­lic cir­cu­la­tion by Sep­tem­ber 2025. It was to in­clude a larg­er se­cu­ri­ty strip, holo­graph­ic el­e­ments, and a new Coat of Arms fea­tur­ing the na­tion­al in­stru­ment—the steel­pan—re­plac­ing the three ships as­so­ci­at­ed with Christo­pher Colum­bus.

Tan­coo as­sured fur­ther de­tails re­gard­ing the re­cent move will be made pub­lic.

“I will ad­vise you all for­mal­ly in due course.”

The Cen­tral Bank has not in­di­cat­ed whether the new time­line will be ad­just­ed or if the de­sign will be re­vised again. It said it will con­tin­ue to keep the pub­lic in­formed on de­vel­op­ments.