JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Carapo activist shoots down claims

by

20140525

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.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored