Derek Achong

Fab­ri­ca­tions and lies.

These were the words com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Ra­jaee Ali used to de­scribe al­le­ga­tions link­ing him to a num­ber of crim­i­nal of­fences, in­clud­ing pos­si­ble cor­rup­tion in a gov­ern­ment out­reach pro­gramme. Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian at his mosque at Ever­green, Cara­po, af­ter lead­ing evening prayers last week, Ali, a for­mer mur­der ac­cused and co-or­di­na­tor of the Min­istry of Sport's con­tro­ver­sial Life Sport pro­gramme in that area, claimed many of the al­le­ga­tions against him and his or­gan­i­sa­tion were un­found­ed and un­proven.

Ali's fa­ther Has­san runs the east­ern arm of the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen."It is to­tal lies. I want them to prove to the na­tion that the things they say­ing is true, be­cause they just come and lie and paint a pic­ture of me," Ali said.Through­out the in­ter­view, Ali adamant­ly de­nied that he and his fam­i­ly were prof­it­ing from mil­lions of dol­lars in gov­ern­ment fund­ing al­leged­ly ob­tained through "ghost gangs" in the pro­gramme.

"Where is the mon­ey? It is not like if it is $10,000. That kind of mon­ey can't hide," Ali said as he re­spond­ed to ac­cu­sa­tions that he had been earn­ing more than $1 mil­lion a month dur­ing his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pro­gramme."You can't get noth­ing for free so. It have no way that they could prove that we get any free mon­ey. We do we work, and we get paid for it.

"They (the min­istry) does send au­di­tors and every­thing to make sure that things com­plete and it up to stan­dard. Then you does get paid. We ain't have no ghost gang. So what they ly­ing on peo­ple for?" Ali said. Point­ing at his broth­er's lux­u­ry SUV and pro­duc­ing a fist­ful of re­ceipts for in­spec­tion, Ali said: "Don't watch the car. We have to pay for it every month just like every­body else."

He al­so said the pro­gramme was not his and his fam­i­ly's on­ly source of in­come, as he said his fam­i­ly had been run­ning sev­er­al busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing a quar­ry in east Trinidad, for a num­ber of years. "We have been in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) and they can't find any­thing. So where the mon­ey?" Ali asked.Since the in­ter­view, new al­le­ga­tions have sur­faced link­ing Ali to al­leged in­con­sis­ten­cies in the pro­gramme.

Ali al­so lament­ed that he would prob­a­bly lose the con­trol of the pro­gramme as a re­sult of the al­le­ga­tions.