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Sunday, July 20, 2025

PNM in pursuit of Jack... Letter to be sent to Gibbs

by

20110602

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er's ar­rival home, the Op­po­si­tion PNM is of­fi­cial­ly ap­proach­ing the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms and Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) to probe al­leged bribery oc­cur­ring in T&T last month in­volv­ing Warn­er. PNM Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds yes­ter­day con­firmed let­ters are be­ing sent to the re­spec­tive au­thor­i­ties on the is­sue. On Tues­day in the Sen­ate, Hinds said bribery al­le­ga­tions made against Warn­er in FI­FA cir­cles should be probed by lo­cal au­thor­i­ties-apart from at FI­FA lev­el-since the al­leged act re­port­ed­ly oc­curred here.

Warn­er and Qatar's Mo­hamed Bin Ham­mam have been sus­pend­ed by FI­FA pend­ing probe of bribery al­le­ga­tions against both. For­mer Con­ca­caf gen­er­al sec­re­tary Chuck Blaz­er has lev­elled bribery al­le­ga­tions against Warn­er and bin Ham­mam that they arranged for US $1mil­lion in bribes to be of­fered to 25 Caribbean as­so­ci­a­tions at a Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion meet­ing in Trinidad over May 10-11.

Hinds in the Sen­ate on Tues­day called on the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms to de­ter­mine whether large sums of US cur­ren­cy had been im­port­ed in­to T&T with­out be­ing de­clared. If not, Hinds want­ed to know where the mon­ey orig­i­nat­ed to fund it lo­cal­ly. Hinds' con­cerns were re­peat­ed at Wednes­day's PNM meet­ing in Mal­oney. Hinds yes­ter­day con­firmed he and the par­ty had moved a step be­yond speak­ing about the mat­ter to of­fi­cial ac­tion. In ad­di­tion to the three au­thor­i­ties to which he was writ­ing, Hinds said he wants in­ter­ven­tion by the Fi­nance Min­istry's FIU.

That unit is man­dat­ed to track/mon­i­tor fi­nan­cial pro­ceeds from var­i­ous busi­ness lines in a bid to curb mon­ey laun­der­ing, ter­ror­ism and drug traf­fick­ing. Hinds said yes­ter­day, " FI­FA's elec­tion has come and gone and while there is a FI­FA probe on the is­sue we in T&T now have to see about our own busi­ness since bribery is a crim­i­nal of­fence here and sub­stan­tial al­le­ga­tions have been made." "We're not pre­pared to leave these mat­ters up to the Prime Min­is­ter or FI­FA, hav­ing re­gard to how the Prime Min­is­ter dealt with the SIA is­sue and the mat­ter of the Gopaul/NP con­tract.

"Mr Warn­er is a Cab­i­net Min­is­ter in T&T. FI­FA can­not re­solve any al­leged in­fringe­ment of T&T's laws."

Hinds said the PNM was act­ing on the mat­ter where lo­cal au­thor­i­ties are con­cerned, par­tic­u­lar­ly since in 2005, the Prime Min­is­ter-while in Op­po­si­tion-had called for the then PNM gov­ern­ment to have the Fraud and An­ti Cor­rup­tion squads probe is­sues re­gard­ing PN­Mites Franklin Khan and Er­ic Williams.

Hinds said Warn­er need­ed to step down once any lo­cal probe be­gan on the is­sue.


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