Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Tourism Min­is­ter Ger­ald Hadeed is deny­ing ru­mours he ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar this week af­ter the leak of an au­dio record­ing in which gov­ern­ment min­is­ters were ac­cused of be­ing cor­rupt.A source said Hadeed had for­ward­ed his res­ig­na­tion to Per­sad-Bisses­sar but she had re­fused to ac­cept it.Calls and texts to Per­sad-Bisses­sar's cell­phone went unan­swered. Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the House, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, said he was not aware of Hadeed's res­ig­na­tion.

Asked via text mes­sage whether he had re­signed over the con­tro­ver­sial record­ing, Hadeed said: "No." He did not re­spond to oth­er ques­tions about the record­ing.Hadeed has nei­ther con­firmed nor de­nied whether it was his voice in the record­ing.Mooni­lal, in an ear­li­er in­ter­view, said pub­lic of­fi­cials were scared of speak­ing in the pri­vate do­main and ac­cused Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley of lead­ing T&T down a path to be­com­ing a "Gestapo so­ci­ety" where se­cret cy­ber-spy­ing was preva­lent.

He added: "If Row­ley ever be­comes prime min­is­ter the so­ci­ety would be­come one where you can­not share an e-mail, a BBM, a text mes­sage. It is a very dis­turb­ing de­vel­op­ment."We have reached a very sad state in this coun­try where per­sons now, when they are in their pri­vate do­main.'It is al­most as if we are man­u­fac­tur­ing a Gestapo so­ci­ety where no­body can be in their pri­vate do­main and say any­thing or do any­thing with­out this type of Gestapo, se­cret cy­ber-spy­ing tak­ing place."

What's on the tape:

In the record­ing, a man, be­lieved to be a se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial, said high-rank­ing peo­ple in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment were cor­rupt and were steal­ing mil­lions of dol­lars and while Per­sad-Bisses­sar was not a bad per­son, there were "rats" around her who were pulling her down.