Geisha Kow­lessar

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy is ex­pect­ed to get a full re­port from Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs on the sur­veil­lance air­craft which has be­come the cen­tre of re­cent con­tro­ver­sy. Sandy al­so has asked Gibbs to give a full ac­count to the pub­lic of the pro­cure­ment process. Sandy was speak­ing at the Sev­enth Com­pli­ance Con­fer­ence on mon­ey laun­der­ing and com­bat­ing the fi­nanc­ing of ter­ror­ism at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Once again the health of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was in the spot­light when Sandy an­nounced she was ill and could not at­tend the con­fer­ence. Apol­o­gis­ing for the Prime Min­is­ter's ab­sence, Sandy added: "She has not been very well late­ly and she has been ad­vised to cur­tail her ac­tiv­i­ties."

Speak­ing to mem­bers of the me­dia af­ter the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the two-day con­fer­ence, Sandy said he ex­pect­ed to get a full re­port from Gibbs some­time yes­ter­day. He main­tained he could not com­ment on the is­sue as he was not aware of the facts. He added: "I am ad­vised that air­craft was ac­quired on tri­al ba­sis but I think the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is best poised to an­swer that. "I was told it was based on a 12-week tri­al ba­sis." Sandy said Gibbs was the "ac­count­ing of­fi­cer" for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and held the au­thor­i­ty on the is­sue with the air­craft. "I sus­pect very much, based on how that tri­al pe­ri­od goes they would de­ter­mine whether they want to ac­quire it or not," he said.

Sandy said he had no de­tails of the trans­ac­tion and did not have any in­for­ma­tion on the pro­cure­ment process.

He added: "If it was some­thing that was done by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, by my Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, then I will have all the an­swers.

"This was done by the ac­count­ing of­fi­cers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice through the Com­mis­sion­er." Asked if he be­lieved Gibbs should be made to di­vulge cer­tain de­tails of the na­ture of the trans­ac­tion, Sandy replied:

"It's a pub­lic mat­ter. De­pend­ing on the na­ture of the air­craft there may be some el­e­ments you may not want to share but def­i­nite­ly, with re­spect to the pro­cure­ment as­pect, if it is above aboard then by all means." On Fri­day in Par­lia­ment, Op­po­si­tion MP Don­na Cox read a let­ter writ­ten in Sep­tem­ber last year by Gibbs in which he stat­ed the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry had award­ed a $902,772 con­tract to a Tacarigua firm for 720 hours of use of the Zenith air­craft for a three-month eval­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Trinidad and To­ba­go Air Sup­port Com­pa­ny Ltd Dirk Barnes said he has doc­u­ments, which he sent to the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty, prov­ing his Zenith CH 750 Air Scout air­craft came in­to T&T on­ly this month. He fur­ther claimed he knew noth­ing about the air­craft re­ferred to in e-mails writ­ten last Ju­ly and re­vealed in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day.

In his fea­ture ad­dress at the con­fer­ence, Sandy said Trinidad and To­ba­go was work­ing dili­gent­ly to­ward erad­i­cat­ing the fi­nanc­ing of ter­ror­ism. He said: "We recog­nise that these il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties are transna­tion­al and cross-bor­der in char­ac­ter and there­fore ef­forts to ad­dress these crimes re­quire that all states co-op­er­ate bi­lat­er­al­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly with the pub­lic sec­tor, in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions and the pri­vate sec­tor. "Ac­cord­ing­ly, tack­ling mon­ey laun­der­ing re­quires en­hanced in­ter­na­tion­al co-op­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion." He said through the ex­change of in­for­ma­tion, in­tel­li­gence and ev­i­dence, law en­force­ment would be pro­vid­ed with stronger cas­es for the pros­e­cu­tion and even­tu­al con­vic­tion of crim­i­nal el­e­ments.