On June 11, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is­sued a state­ment on Face­book, claim­ing that “mas­sive amounts of for­eign cur­ren­cy” was pur­chased by lo­cal busi­ness­es, which was then wire trans­ferred to for­eign ac­counts linked to drug car­tels.

The T&T Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments on so­cial me­dia were made on the same day that At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, John Je­re­mie, wrapped up the de­bate in Par­lia­ment to ex­tend the State if Emer­gency for a fur­ther three months.

Speak­ing af­ter mid­night on June 11, Mr Je­re­mie said the law in T&T ap­plies to every sin­gle per­son in in this coun­try, “whether you hap­pen to be a fun­der of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, whether you hap­pen to be a mem­ber of the 1 per cent, if you break the law, if you cross that line that would ex­cite the mem­ber for Tu­na­puna, I want to be very care­ful.

“Whether you are a black man from the Beetham, or whether you hap­pen to live in Bayshore and are steal­ing gov­ern­ment land and prop­er­ty... whether you hap­pen to have called the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al es­sen­tial­ly at mid­night on the 28th (of April, 2025), when the re­sults of the elec­tions were com­ing in, to say, ‘Lis­ten, get that lease fixed up for me now.’ Whether you hap­pen to be any of those per­sons, you know what? The mem­ber for Tu­na­puna and the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty (Roger Alexan­der) I am sure will cer­tain­ly put you on a PDO (Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der) with Pip­py and Ra­jae Ali down in Teteron.”

I am sure the pas­sage quot­ed above will be cit­ed fre­quent­ly when a cer­tain res­i­dent of Bayshore gets the op­por­tu­ni­ty to chal­lenge the PDO “put on” him, fol­low­ing his and his wife’s ar­rest 13 days af­ter Mr Je­re­mie’s com­ments.

On the af­ter­noon of June 11, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar post­ed the state­ment on Face­book that was head­lined ‘NO SPE­CIAL TREAT­MENT. NO IM­MU­NI­TY.’

The T&T Prime Min­is­ter re­it­er­at­ed her At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s com­ments that the law ap­plies equal­ly to every cit­i­zen, re­gard­less of their fi­nan­cial sta­tus, so­cial stand­ing, po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions, or in­flu­ence, “whether crim­i­nal el­e­ments iden­ti­fy them­selves as the “Sixx”, the “Sev­en”, the “One Per­cent”, or by any oth­er name...”

But, in my view, she mis­in­ter­pret­ed Mr Je­re­mie’s com­ments when she wrote (or ap­proved), “The one per cent com­mu­ni­ty con­sists of per­sons of many eth­nic groups, it does not con­sist of a sin­gu­lar eth­nic group.”

By cit­ing the An­tho­ny Bour­dain in­ter­view ear­ly in his pre­sen­ta­tion, Mr Je­re­mie made it clear the “sin­gu­lar eth­nic group” to whom he re­ferred.

In the post, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar made it clear that there can be no spe­cial treat­ment and no im­mu­ni­ty from le­gal con­se­quences for any­one based on wealth, sta­tus, or as­so­ci­a­tion. And she out­lined that law en­force­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to en­sure that the laws of the land are ap­plied equal­ly to all.

She then said: “The state is get­ting for­eign as­sis­tance to track bil­lions of US dol­lars that have been sent out of the coun­try over the last 20 years.

“Some cur­rent and for­mer high-rank­ing of­fi­cials of lo­cal banks fa­cil­i­tat­ed the sale of mas­sive amounts of for­eign cur­ren­cy to lo­cal busi­ness­es, which was then trans­ferred to for­eign ac­counts linked to car­tels and al­so used to pur­chase re­al es­tate hold­ings and busi­ness­es in col­lab­o­ra­tion with car­tels.

“Bil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of il­le­gal drugs have passed through this coun­try over the last 25 years and no one can an­swer how it was paid for.

“The state is fi­nal­ly get­ting as­sis­tance to deal with drug traf­fick­ing and mon­ey laun­der­ing and we will let the chips fall where they may.

“All law-abid­ing cit­i­zens have noth­ing to fear from the ac­tions of the US and lo­cal law en­force­ment agen­cies.”

If T&T is to be­lieve its Prime Min­is­ter’s Face­book com­ments on June 11, cer­tain ques­tions msut be asked:

* Is an agency of the US Gov­ern­ment as­sist­ing lo­cal law en­force­ment of­fi­cials in track­ing the bil­lions of US dol­lars that were ex­port­ed from T&T banks and end­ed up in for­eign ac­counts linked to drug car­tels?

* Do the Prime Min­is­ter, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (and a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer) know the names of the “cur­rent and for­mer high-rank­ing of­fi­cials of lo­cal banks,” who fa­cil­i­tat­ed the sale of bil­lions of US dol­lars?

* Do the three in­di­vid­u­als ref­er­enced above know the names of the lo­cal busi­ness­es that pur­chased the bil­lions of US dol­lars?

* Do the three in­di­vid­u­als know the names of the for­eign banks that re­ceived the bil­lions of US dol­lars?

* Do they know the re­al es­tate hold­ings and busi­ness­es that were pur­chased with the bil­lions of US dol­lars ex­port­ed from T&T?;

* Is the US agency prepar­ing a case against the lo­cal bankers, the T&T busi­ness­es and the for­eign banks?

* And is the chal­lenge the case faces, prov­ing, be­yond a rea­son­able doubt, that a nexus ex­ists be­tween the lo­cal busi­ness­es and the drug car­tels”

Let the chips fall where they may?

As at June 30, 2026, com­mer­cial banks in T&T held as­sets of about TT$164 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank’s Da­ta Cen­tre.

The two largest com­mer­cial banks in T&T are Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) and First Cit­i­zens Group. Both of those banks are con­trolled by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole (the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance), in whose name as­sets be­long­ing to the state are held.

By my es­ti­mate, the two state-con­trolled banks hold a to­tal of $96.65 bil­lion in as­sets in T&T, which is about 59 per cent of the lo­cal com­mer­cial banks’ as­sets.

RFHL held $55.1 bil­lion in as­sets in T&T as at the end of June, 2026, ac­cord­ing to its unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the nine months end­ed June 30, 2026. That was about 41 per cent of the bank­ing group’s to­tal as­sets.

In its fi­nan­cials for the nine months end­ed June 30, 2026, the First Cit­i­zens Group dis­closed that its to­tal as­sets amount­ed to $49.6 bil­lion. As­sum­ing that about 85 per cent of that group’s as­sets are held in T&T, that places its T&T as­sets at $42.16 bil­lion.

If the US agency in­ves­ti­gat­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing, re­lat­ing to T&T banks, were to file in­dict­ments in the fu­ture—and if about 59 per cent of the T&T’s com­mer­cial bank­ing as­sets are held by two state-con­trolled com­pa­nies—it be­hoves the Gov­ern­ment in gen­er­al, and Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Mr Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo (as Cor­po­ra­tion Sole) in par­tic­u­lar, to en­sure that:

* T&T na­tion­als wish­ing to send and re­ceive US dol­lars are not im­pact­ed, as US banks may seek to change cor­re­spon­dent bank­ing re­la­tions with this coun­try;

* That na­tion­als of coun­tries in which RFHL and First Cit­i­zens op­er­ate are like­wise not im­pact­ed.

I am NOT sug­gest­ing that ei­ther RFHL or First Cit­i­zens are, in any way, in­volved in any­thing sug­gest­ed by Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar. What I am say­ing is that US banks may take a broad-brush ap­proach to all com­mer­cial banks op­er­at­ing in T&T and that bank cus­tomers should not be the ones to suf­fer.