Geisha Kow­lessar

Con­gress of the Peo­ple leader and Jus­tice Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har yes­ter­day urged for­mer Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent and In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) leader Jack Warn­er to go the Unit­ed States to face tri­al in con­nec­tion with the on­go­ing cor­rup­tion scan­dal, in­sist­ing that the coun­try's rep­u­ta­tion has been tar­nished.

"This is the bat­tle for truth and T&T has to have its im­age re­pol­ished so that the true beau­ty of the na­tion be seen and not be iden­ti­fied by the ac­tions of Mr Warn­er and those around him. I think it is so im­por­tant for him to save the rep­u­ta­tion of this coun­try," Ra­mad­har told lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al mem­bers of the me­dia dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the COP's Flag­ship House in St Clair yes­ter­day.

Warn­er is one of 14 peo­ple want­ed by the Unit­ed States on sus­pi­cion of so­lic­it­ing bribes worth mil­lions in his Fi­fa deal­ings. He has been charged with mul­ti­ple of­fens­es, in­clud­ing rack­e­teer­ing and bribery, but has de­nied the charges.

Warn­er, cur­rent­ly on $2.5 mil­lion bail af­ter his ar­rest lo­cal­ly, is ex­pect­ed to reap­pear in court on Ju­ly 12. How­ev­er, he has threat­ened to re­veal se­crets re­gard­ing "re­sources" he pro­vid­ed for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, which are pur­port­ed­ly linked to Fi­fa.

Scoff­ing at this yes­ter­day, Ra­mad­har said if Warn­er was in­no­cent as he claimed he should not have a prob­lem go­ing to New York to face the courts."Go to your tri­al so that we will hear what the facts are and not what you say they are. And when you go we hope that what you speak will be the truth and not fur­ther al­le­ga­tions, as what we have had with you over the last cou­ple of days.

"This is a prob­lem for all of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the so­lu­tion rests in the heart, con­science and in the hands of Mr Warn­er. If it is that Mr Warn­er cares about this coun­try then he should go to the US and have his tri­al there."He added, "At the end of the day we don't want tech­ni­cal­i­ties. We want truth. As a lawyer, and I will tell you that for many years the in­no­cent al­ways rush for an ear­ly tri­al, so as a pa­tri­ot I am ask­ing for him to do so."

On de­tails of the ques­tion­able trans­ac­tions made by Warn­er, Ra­mad­har said due to the ju­di­cial process it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate for him to speak on mat­ters be­fore the court."These are charges that em­anate from the Unit­ed States and there­fore the con­duct of this Gov­ern­ment is on­ly to en­sure that the ju­di­cial process for ex­tra­di­tion is en­gaged. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has done what he has to do," Ra­mad­har said.

But he warned that some­times ex­tra­di­tion mat­ters could be dragged on for a lengthy pe­ri­od by at­tor­neys.On his re­la­tion­ship with Warn­er, Ra­mad­har de­scribed it as one of in­dif­fer­ence. He said since 2011 he had called for Warn­er's re­moval from the Cab­i­net, adding that when the ILP was cre­at­ed he al­so had views on that, es­pe­cial­ly with the use of mon­ey in pol­i­tics.

"I thought that it was a very dan­ger­ous de­vel­op­ment...he hav­ing been elect­ed to Ch­agua­nas West hav­ing re­gard to all the al­le­ga­tions," Ra­mad­har said."I thought that at that point in time some­thing had gone wrong with the democ­ra­cy. I thought that it had been dis­turbed and the Con­gress of the Peo­ple had tak­en a strong po­si­tion on that. We do not be­live in the use of mon­ey for po­lit­i­cal heads."Mr Warn­er's ac­tions of the past has re­al­ly pol­lut­ed the stream of the pol­i­tics of this na­tion."

No PP mem­ber­squizzed by FBI

Con­gress of the Peo­ple leader Prakash Ra­mad­har says nei­ther he nor any oth­er Gov­ern­ment mem­ber has been in­ter­viewed by US au­thor­i­ties re­gard­ing po­lit­i­cal fund­ing which may have been pro­vid­ed to the par­ty by Jack Warn­er.How­ev­er, he pledged this coun­try's co­op­er­a­tion with the on­go­ing probe.

"I have no knowl­edge of Mr Warn­er's fund­ing but I can tell you Mr Warn­er has em­barked on a process of get­ting rid of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple from very ear­ly on. So it will be shock­ing if he helped us fi­nan­cial­ly," Ra­mad­har said as he re­spond­ed to re­ports that the FBI had ques­tioned some Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in con­nec­tion with the case.

Asked if he had any con­ver­sa­tion with Warn­er about hand­ing him­self to US au­thor­i­ties Ra­mad­har said he had not.Warn­er, who still holds the po­si­tion of an MP, was al­so prob­lem­at­ic, Ra­mad­har said.Say­ing that Warn­er was still pop­u­lar, Ra­mad­har added that he not on­ly had a say in the Par­lia­ment but al­so ques­tioned the in­tegri­ty of many.

"It is a prob­lem be­cause he stands in the Par­lia­ment with the au­thor­i­ty of the Par­lia­ment, but that is the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process we have en­gaged in and there is no process to re­move him un­less he is ex­tra­dit­ed," Ra­mad­har added.But he said he was cer­tain the con­stituents of Ch­agua­nas West would deal with that mat­ter ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.

On whether he be­lieved Warn­er has not act­ed in the best in­ter­ests of T&T, Ra­mad­har was al­so vo­cal on this."I will not say that he has not act­ed in the in­ter­ests of Trinidad and To­ba­go, but what is be­ing un­earthed now is that it is a se­ri­ous self in­ter­est and I can't say now what pro­por­tions of his ac­tions were in the in­ter­est of T&T or that it was self mo­ti­vat­ed un­der the cov­er of the in­ter­set of T&T," Ra­mad­har said.

Ef­forts to con­tact Warn­er yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful as he did not an­swer calls to his cell­phone.