Renu­ka Singh

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is in­sist­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley vi­o­lat­ed the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act by fail­ing to dis­close his in­ter­est in a town­house in To­ba­go to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.

Yes­ter­day, the PM pro­duced a sheaf of doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing his con­fi­den­tial Form A which were filed with the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in de­fence against what he called was “hog­wash” by the UNC. He al­so queried how the UNC got ac­cess to the in­for­ma­tion, since this was a con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ment that should not have been dis­closed by the com­mis­sion.

Un­der the act, per­sons must com­plete and sub­mit two forms - A and B. Form A de­tails all in­comes, as­sets and li­a­bil­i­ties and is con­fi­den­tial. Form B mean­while de­tails all reg­is­tra­ble in­ter­ests.

While the PM yes­ter­day main­tained he re­vealed own­er­ship of the prop­er­ty in his Form A de­c­la­ra­tion, the UNC says he should have done so on both forms.

San Juan/Barataria MP Sad­dam Ho­sein and Sen­a­tor Wade Mark main­tained their stance dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion in Port-of-Spain mo­ments af­ter the PM held a me­dia brief­ing to pro­duce ev­i­dence he de­clared the $1.2 mil­lion town­house.

“You have to give the lo­ca­tion, de­scrip­tion and what is your ben­e­fi­cial in­ter­ests. Whether you’re a co-own­er, full own­er of the land. So this goes on Form B,” Ho­sein said.

He said Form A need­ed more de­tails and more per­son­al in­for­ma­tion with re­spect to the val­ue of the prop­er­ty.

“The both forms must cor­re­spond be­cause Form A is se­cret, form B is pub­lic,” he said.

Ho­sein said Form B was used to in­form the pub­lic about what is owned be­cause a per­son in pub­lic life is be­ing paid with pub­lic funds.

He said the PM’s ar­gu­ment that he had ac­cess to the con­fi­den­tial Form A was “il­log­i­cal.”

“He some­how al­lud­ed that I had pri­vate in­for­ma­tion or pri­vate ac­cess to Form A, that is ab­solute­ly un­true. We on­ly had ac­cess to his Form B through the law. If Dr Row­ley is say­ing that I, in fact, had ac­cess to his Form A and that he did, in fact, file the house in his Form A for the pe­ri­od, then why would I ac­cuse the Prime Min­is­ter of that, say­ing he didn’t make the prop­er de­c­la­ra­tion?” Ho­sein asked.

“It makes ab­solute­ly no sense and it is clear­ly an il­log­i­cal ar­gu­ment.”

Mark said when the UNC did its checks at the com­mis­sion last Thurs­day for 2019 de­c­la­ra­tions, oth­er per­sons who pur­chased town­hous­es in the same de­vel­op­ment made it known in Form B, in­clud­ing Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Alvin Hillaire, Paria Fu­elling chair­man New­man George and Trinidad and To­ba­go Mort­gage Fi­nance head In­grid Lash­ley.

Mark ques­tioned why those per­sons knew to put the in­for­ma­tion in Form B but the Prime Min­is­ter did not.

“We find it very lu­di­crous. We find it very sus­pi­cious, we find it very ques­tion­able,” Mark said.

Mark said he has been fil­ing forms for the last 20 years and said the PM should know bet­ter. He said the PM ques­tioned why the me­dia was tak­ing on the UNC but not­ed this coun­try was not un­der a dic­ta­tor­ship.

Ho­sein said al­though the PM dis­closed the in­for­ma­tion in one form and not the oth­er, it was still an of­fence.

“We are as­sum­ing that he did in fact file it in Form A for 2019. None of us could see it be­sides the Prime Min­is­ter and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion,” Ho­sein said.

Ho­sein said he would wait for a re­sponse from the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to con­firm whether the PM did in fact make the de­c­la­ra­tion.

Ho­sein said ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 21 of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act, a per­son must fur­nish both forms to the com­mis­sion.

“The act pro­vides that you must fill out two forms. If some­one is in breach of this, or know­ing­ly makes a false de­c­la­ra­tion, or fails with­out rea­son­able cause to give in­for­ma­tion to the com­mis­sion is guilty of an of­fence,” he said, not­ing the penal­ty is a fine of $200,000 and im­pris­on­ment of up to 10 years.

Sec­tion 21 of the act, Ho­sein said, pro­vides for both Forms A and B.

The UNC is al­so ques­tion­ing how the Prime Min­is­ter was able to ac­quire the prop­er­ty at a sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced cost from To­ba­go busi­ness­man Al­lan Warn­er, whom they claim is close friends with the PM. They not­ed the PM’s daugh­ter al­so ac­quired a town­house at a re­duced price.

“You and your daugh­ter was so lucky?” Mark asked.

Mark said he was not cast­ing as­per­sions on Warn­er but was just putting those ques­tions out in the pub­lic do­main.

“We are hap­py that you bought two town­hous­es and we are hap­py that you got a ma­jor dis­count. I hope that when I ap­proach Al­lan Warn­er to buy an In­ez­gate prop­er­ty, he would be so kind as to give me a dis­count as well,” Mark said.

Mark called on the PM to be trans­par­ent and ac­count­able to the peo­ple of the coun­try.

Mark called on the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to con­tin­ue its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to whether the PM filed the own­er­ship doc­u­ments with them.