Cherisse Moe

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan has giv­en a high-pow­ered le­gal team–led by British Queen's Coun­sel Alan Neu­man–three months to pre­pare a pre­lim­i­nary re­port, fol­low­ing cor­rup­tion in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to key state in­sti­tu­tions. The en­ter­pris­es un­der probe are Petrotrin, Scar­bor­ough hos­pi­tal, Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion and the Evolv­ing Tech­nolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Co Ltd. The team al­so in­clud­ed Mar­tin Hall, Ak­bar Ali, Mark Seep­er­sad and Ger­ard Ramdin. The probe is be­ing con­duct­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the elite po­lice An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau. Ram­lo­gan made the rev­e­la­tions dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at his Port-of-Spain of­fices yes­ter­day.

He said the team be­gan meet­ing line min­is­ters and their tech­nocrats on Thurs­day to re­ceive doc­u­ments and to be­gin prepar­ing their pre­lim­i­nary analy­ses of the projects. Ram­lo­gan, who said he could not yet di­vulge the cost of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions, stat­ed that those found guilty of wrong­do­ing would be dealt with to the fullest ex­tent of the law. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al said, how­ev­er, that it was "very like­ly" that a for­mer prime min­is­ter could be tak­en be­fore the court. He said a file was sent to Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard re­gard­ing the de­nial of a ra­dio li­cence to the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha. "No price tag is too heavy for this coun­try to pay to un­rav­el the cor­rup­tion and mis­man­age­ment that took place un­der the PNM, to en­sure that it nev­er takes place again," he said.

Ram­lo­gan said up­on as­sum­ing of­fice, he had been in­un­dat­ed with com­plaints from the gen­er­al pub­lic and his min­is­te­r­i­al col­leagues –in­clud­ing Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er–about cor­rup­tion and mis­man­age­ment of funds un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. "We were lit­er­al­ly bom­bard­ed by com­plaints by those who with­in the sys­tem were un­hap­py with what was tak­ing place, but who could not say or voice their ob­jec­tion for fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion," he said. Ram­lo­gan said he was invit­ing all cit­i­zens to as­sist in the in­ves­ti­ga­tions by pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion which could "point the team in the right di­rec­tion." Stress­ing that the in­ves­ti­ga­tions were not "po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tions," he said: "If you have co­coa in the sun, well, then it's time to per­haps cov­er it."

Ude­cott in­ves­ti­ga­tions "del­i­cate"

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al re­vealed that the probe in­to state-owned Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) was on­go­ing and had reached a "del­i­cate stage." Ram­lo­gan said that two weeks ago, he met with foren­sic au­di­tor Bob Lindquist, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert and a "high-pow­ered team of in­ves­ti­ga­tors" to fur­ther dis­cuss the mat­ter. He said he was in­formed by Philbert "that he does know where Mr Calder Hart is...I am equal­ly in­formed that those in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau are, in fact, pro­ceed­ing. "I am ab­solute­ly mon­i­tor­ing those in­ves­ti­ga­tions, which have reached a rather del­i­cate and sen­si­tive stage," Ram­lo­gan said. "It is not a mat­ter that has been for­got­ten at all...It is ac­tive­ly be­ing pur­sued."