Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the en­tire na­tion is now at risk be­cause of the im­prop­er and il­le­gal ap­point­ment of Su­san Fran­cois, this coun­try's Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al as act­ing di­rec­tor of the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit of T&T. "This is putting the State at risk," he said.Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert con­demned the ap­point­ment of Fran­cois dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at the Red House on Fri­day.

"It's not on­ly void, it's dan­ger­ous­ly il­le­gal. This per­son (FIU di­rec­tor) now has pow­er to go to a bank and ask in­for­ma­tion on you. It's a very pow­er­ful unit," Row­ley said."They have now let loose a per­son, by im­prop­er ap­point­ment, to have the pow­er to look in­to the busi­ness af­fairs of every per­son or busi­ness in this coun­try. This is a very se­ri­ous mat­ter be­cause this FIU is a very pow­er­ful and dan­ger­ous or­gan­i­sa­tion be­cause it now strips cit­i­zens, cor­po­rate and in­di­vid­ual, of their pri­va­cy," he added.

He de­clared: "You now are at the mer­cy of this or­gan­i­sa­tion which has the pow­er to go in­to your bank ac­count, in­to your busi­ness to trace any as­pect of any­thing you are in­volved in."He warned that if the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment pro­ceeds with the il­le­gal ap­point­ment it "will be ex­pos­ing the state to se­ri­ous li­a­bil­i­ties."Row­ley said that the Cab­i­net had no au­thor­i­ty to make such an ap­point­ment. He in­sist­ed that such ap­point­ments were to be made by the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC).

"Sec­tion 121 of the Con­sti­tu­tion says the pow­er to ap­point per­sons to pub­lic of­fices vests in the Pub­lic Ser­vices Com­mis­sion," Im­bert added.Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan an­nounced the ap­point­ment of Fran­cois as the act­ing di­rec­tor of the FIU, which is be­ing es­tab­lished to im­ple­ment mon­ey laun­der­ing pre­ven­tion ini­tia­tives of the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF).Ram­lo­gan said then that he spoke with Caribbean Court of Jus­tice judge Rol­ston Nel­son and Jus­tice Char­maine Pem­ber­ton, who rec­om­mend­ed Fran­cois, and he said he was sat­is­fied that she was qual­i­fied for the job.

Row­ley said a six-mem­ber pan­el, com­pris­ing of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the Cen­tral Bank, two FIU con­sul­tants and Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials, was in the process of screen­ing the three short­list­ed ap­pli­cants for the po­si­tion when a phone call was made to that pan­el and the en­tire process was dis­con­tin­ued.He said the act­ing ap­point­ment was con­ferred on some­one who did not ap­ply for the po­si­tion.Row­ley ac­cused the AG of try­ing to im­pli­cate the two judges who rec­om­mend­ed Fran­cois "in Gov­ern­ment mis­con­duct."Row­ley want­ed to know in what ca­pac­i­ty did Ram­lo­gan speak with Fran­cois's ref­er­ees.

Row­ley said that while the AG was not part of the in­ter­view pan­el, he was pro­mot­ing him­self as the per­son dri­ving the ap­point­ment."The AG has no au­thor­i­ty to screen and find any­body far less ap­point any­body," Row­ley stressed.Row­ley said for yet an­oth­er time "an­oth­er one of our crime-fight­ing tools is be­ing blunt­ed by Gov­ern­ment's strange ac­tion." Im­bert said the Gov­ern­ment is ex­pect­ed to fail in moves to sat­is­fy the FATF be­cause Fran­cois' ap­point­ment was il­le­gal."It will be­come ob­vi­ous to the FATF very soon that this di­rec­tor is an il­le­gal ap­point­ment," Im­bert said.