Geisha Kow­lessar

The Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment is not ob­lig­at­ed to re­veal any facts to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment in its quest to ob­tain in­for­ma­tion about an FBI probe in­volv­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, says Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal.

She was re­spond­ing to state­ments made by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan who said he in­tend­ed to write the US At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Er­ic Hold­er seek­ing fur­ther facts on the mat­ter."The US Gov­ern­ment is in­de­pen­dent just like our coun­try and there­fore there is no oblig­a­tion on its part to pro­vide us with any in­for­ma­tion."The on­ly time a gov­ern­ment be­comes bound would be in in­stances of bi­lat­er­al or mul­ti­lat­er­al treaties," See­ta­hal said.

An in­ter­na­tion­al Reuters sto­ry, head­lined "FBI has co-op­er­at­ing wit­ness for soc­cer fraud probe: sources" said the probe "re­cent­ly in­ten­si­fied af­ter in­ves­ti­ga­tors per­suad­ed a key par­ty to be a co-op­er­at­ing wit­ness." The sto­ry claimed the wit­ness was Daryan Warn­er, son of Jack Warn­er, a for­mer Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-

Bisses­sar in a state­ment is­sued last Wednes­day said she would not be rushed in­to mak­ing any pub­lic state­ment on the mat­ter.

"I will not re­ly on pub­lished re­ports in the me­dia, but will again seek to get of­fi­cial cor­rob­o­ra­tion of the in­for­ma­tion now in the pub­lic do­main be­fore mak­ing any de­ter­mi­na­tion or pro­nounce­ment," Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said.See­ta­hal said if there was a friend­ly re­la­tion­ship be­tween the US and T&T, a re­ply could be ex­pect­ed but it could al­so be lim­it­ed in de­tails.

"If the US Gov­ern­ment do in fact re­ply they could say they are not in a po­si­tion to re­veal any facts be­cause they may have rea­son to be­lieve the in­ves­ti­ga­tion could be com­pro­mised."Or if they do give some de­tails they could make it clear it was not for pub­lic con­sump­tion," See­ta­hal added.