Min­is­ter of Sport Anil Roberts yes­ter­day trained his guns on the PNM's Colm Im­bert say­ing the Diego Mar­tin North MP must ex­plain why he had more than $.5 mil­lion in T&T and US cur­ren­cy stashed away in his Hills­bor­ough, Mar­aval, home when rob­bers pounced on Mon­day.

Af­ter ex­press­ing his hap­pi­ness that Im­bert's son, who was asleep in the house at the time of the bur­glary, was un­hurt, Roberts ques­tioned why the for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter had in his pos­ses­sion $200,000 in lo­cal cur­ren­cy and US$20,000."Every time the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty stand up and say in Par­lia­ment that mur­ders are down in Laven­tille, the mem­ber for Diego Mar­tin North screams out, 'Don't say it. When you say it crime ac­cel­er­ates,'" Roberts said.

The Sport Min­is­ter said Im­bert must ex­plain why he had that large amount of cur­ren­cy in his pos­ses­sion when there are many oth­er ways le­git­i­mate fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions can be car­ried out, in­clud­ing per­son­al and banker's cheques, deb­it cards, cred­it cards, mon­ey trans­fers and bank drafts."There are se­ri­ous ques­tions Im­bert must an­swer es­pe­cial­ly since he is de­ter­mined to bring down the Gov­ern­ment and is some­one who has iden­ti­fied crime as the ma­jor prob­lem fac­ing T&T to­day," Roberts said.

He al­so called on the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit, the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and the po­lice to con­duct a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter and pro­vide an­swers to the ques­tions that have arisen since the rob­bery at the MP's home."Every week Im­bert claims crime is out of pro­por­tion and ques­tions all the sta­tis­tics pro­vid­ed by the Gov­ern­ment and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty claim­ing that they are all ly­ing and he is liv­ing in fear," Roberts said.

"But lo and be­hold we learn that he has a huge amount of cash ly­ing around in his house. And for what pur­pose? Is it to pay salaries of his work­ers and his house staff? He needs to clear the air im­me­di­ate­ly."The Sport Min­is­ter re­called that dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign of 2010, Im­bert was telling the na­tion that the PP politi­cians were mov­ing around with "pick­ups of cash."

He said: "But this seems now to be Im­bert's re­al­i­ty. He is clear­ly judg­ing oth­ers by his own stan­dards. And now the ques­tion must be asked, 'Is he the Mr Big the for­mer prime min­ster spoke about?'"He said po­lice have raid­ed drug dens and oth­er peo­ple's prop­er­ties and con­fis­cat­ed less than what was re­port­ed stolen from Im­bert's house and won­dered if dou­ble stan­dards are be­ing em­ployed.

"What are we see­ing, one law for the Mem­ber for Diego Mar­tin North and an­oth­er for a man liv­ing in Laven­tille? Every­thing must be placed above board to avoid wild spec­u­la­tion," said Roberts.