An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin has con­firmed that the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch (FIB) is prob­ing the source, method, and tim­ing of the US$950,000 pay­ment made to Adid­ja “Vy­bz Kar­tel” Palmer by a lo­cal pro­mot­er to ap­pear at last Sat­ur­day’s One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val.

Ben­jamin was speak­ing at a ve­hi­cle han­dover cer­e­mo­ny yes­ter­day at the Po­lice Acad­e­my in St James, where 67 Toy­ota RAV4 SU­Vs were of­fi­cial­ly com­mis­sioned for use by the po­lice ser­vice across the coun­try.

Ben­jamin said while “the TTPS has not re­ceived any for­mal re­port on the mat­ter”, they are pro­ceed­ing with their own in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The act­ing top cop as­sured, “Nev­er­the­less, we con­tin­ue to look at the mat­ter, and based on that, I have al­ready en­gaged the FIB to look in­to the mat­ter, so we will look in­to it and will see what are the ram­i­fi­ca­tions that come out of it.”

Fol­low­ing the dis­clo­sure that US$950,000 had been paid to Palmer to ap­pear as the main act in the May 31 reg­gae con­cert at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said he was “in­trigued” by the amount of for­eign ex­change that had re­port­ed­ly changed hands.

Palmer was sup­posed to have been paid a to­tal of US $1.35 mil­lion to per­form in the show, which al­so fea­tured oth­er for­eign acts in­clud­ing Malie Donn, Rvss­ian, Siz­zla Kalon­ji, and Moliy, along with lo­cal artistes La­dy La­va and Ravi B.

Ja­maican reg­gae and dance­hall artiste Chron­ic Law, how­ev­er, was said to be the lone for­eign act that per­formed on the night.

The much-an­tic­i­pat­ed ap­pear­ance of Palmer at the sold-out One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val end­ed in dis­ap­point­ment, as the dance­hall star failed to take the stage.

While his ab­sence was blamed on the pro­mot­er’s al­leged fail­ure to pay the full US$1.35 mil­lion fee, or­gan­is­ers in­sist­ed that US$950,000—more than three-quar­ters of the amount–had al­ready been de­liv­ered.

Palmer, who was ad­ver­tised as the main act in the event, was said to have been paid up­front and had been ex­pect­ing the re­main­der of the monies be­fore Sat­ur­day’s show.

Palmer had re­quest­ed pay­ment via a sin­gle bank trans­fer.

Con­tact­ed on Sun­day for a com­ment on the con­trac­tu­al fees be­ing tout­ed for Palmer and some of the oth­er artistes—in light of the com­plaints by the pub­lic re­gard­ing the lack of avail­able for­eign ex­change—Tan­coo said, “I am al­so in­trigued by the amount of for­eign ex­change be­ing men­tioned in the me­dia re­ports as hav­ing been in­volved in this ven­ture and I ex­pect in oth­er sim­i­lar ven­tures.

“I have re­quest­ed the Min­istry of Fi­nance to in­ves­ti­gate and re­port on the very ques­tions you raised.”

The new­ly in­stalled min­is­ter as­sured that it was just “a fact-find­ing ef­fort”.

“Our Prime Min­is­ter and Gov­ern­ment is ful­ly sup­port­ive of pri­vate sec­tor de­vel­op­ment of for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tors, in­clud­ing the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of the mu­sic and en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try to­wards greater con­tri­bu­tion to our coun­try’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct. We will share the re­sults of this in­quiry when we get same,” Tan­coo added.

Of­fi­cer filmed beat­ing pa­tron placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive du­ty

Mean­while, an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is con­tin­u­ing in­to an in­ci­dent in which an of­fi­cer from the Guard and Emer­gency Branch (GEB) was record­ed beat­ing a pa­tron at the venue.

Ben­jamin con­firmed, “One of the things that we have done is to re­move the of­fi­cer from that de­part­ment ... in terms of the pub­lic or­der team, and we are go­ing to en­sure while that is hap­pen­ing that the req­ui­site train­ing and al­so that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is done.”

Guardian Me­dia was told the of­fi­cer has been as­signed to ad­min­is­tra­tive du­ties for the du­ra­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Ben­jamin ex­plained that, as out­lined in the TTPS reg­u­la­tions, the process could take up to 30 days. If more time is need­ed, in­ves­ti­ga­tors may be grant­ed an ad­di­tion­al 30-day ex­ten­sion.