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Sunday, June 22, 2025

Po­lice, AG still prob­ing Life­S­port 'mat­ters'...

Substance of case remains

by

20161025

Don't ex­hale yet.

Re­cent judg­ment quash­ing the Fi­nance Min­istry's au­dit re­port of the Life­S­port pro­gramme does not close the book on Life­S­port, since the po­lice and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al are con­tin­u­ing probes in­to these "mat­ters," At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said yes­ter­day.

"Po­lice cer­ti­fied up to yes­ter­day (Mon) there is an on­go­ing probe in­to Life­S­port mat­ters and it's con­tin­u­ing. Ac­tion (probe) which is afoot in sev­er­al quar­ters is undis­turbed by the judg­ment and I would not be too com­fort­able if I was some peo­ple in their new found brav­ery and pub­lic ut­ter­ances," Al-Rawi added at a me­dia brief­ing at his of­fice at Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus, Port-of-Spain.

"I'm not go­ing to let the cats out of the bags and al­low the prize to es­cape," he stressed.

The AG was ad­dress­ing ques­tions on what may come next re­gard­ing Life­S­port is­sues af­ter Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er on Mon­day ruled the Fi­nance Min­istry Au­dit Unit had con­duct­ed the Life­S­port au­dit un­fair­ly and quashed the re­port.

Yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi said the judge stat­ed the au­dit had failed to give for­mer Sport Min­istry Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Ash­win Creed and pro­gramme di­rec­tors Cor­nelius Price, Theodore Charles and Ron­nel Bar­clay (claimants in the mat­ter) chance to re­spond to al­le­ga­tions against them be­fore the fi­nal re­port was laid in Par­lia­ment by for­mer prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The judge said their right to nat­ur­al jus­tice was in­fringed and the au­di­tors failed to in­form the of­fi­cials be­fore the re­port was aired pub­licly and award­ed costs.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, at a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress meet­ing on Mon­day night, had boast­ed that the rul­ing now cleared the way for for­mer sport min­is­ter Anil Roberts, who presided over Life­S­port, to re­turn to UNC front­line. Roberts al­so de­clared vin­di­ca­tion.

But yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi hint­ed at fu­ture ac­tion on Life­S­port, not­ing there are oth­er mat­ters around it "which are re­ceiv­ing very care­ful fo­cused at­ten­tion."

De­clin­ing de­tails, he con­firmed there was noth­ing in the law of the judg­ment to block crim­i­nal probes and such a probe by the po­lice was not com­pro­mised.

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted the judg­ment was hard to ap­peal. On whether civ­il ac­tion would be un­der­tak­en by his min­istry, Al-Rawi said: "We're ad­dress­ing all mat­ters. I'm not go­ing to speak pre­ma­ture­ly."

He said con­tin­u­ing probes don't re­quire the fi­nance au­dit re­port specif­i­cal­ly and an­oth­er au­dit re­port didn't have to be done, since fu­ture in­ves­ti­ga­tions could be based on the sub­stance of the re­port and oth­er in­for­ma­tion which had been re­ceived on Life­S­port.

"An­oth­er au­dit isn't the way to go. Mat­ters need to go to court. The sub­stance of the al­le­ga­tions are there. They're very ac­tion­able and they are with the re­spec­tive au­thor­i­ties and are be­ing act­ed up­on."

The AG deemed the Life­S­port mat­ter "Sec­tion 35", fol­low­ing the con­tro­ver­sial Sec­tion 34 fi­as­co un­der the past Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He blamed the breach­es not­ed in the court mat­ter on Per­sad-Bisses­sar. He said she put the re­port in­to the pub­lic do­main when she laid it in Par­lia­ment on Ju­ly 25, 2014.

Al-Rawi said she knew Creed and the oth­er of­fi­cials had not com­ment­ed on al­le­ga­tions in the re­port and she knew the re­port would have even­tu­al­ly been quashed.

"It's cu­ri­ous she's now dis­tanced her­self from her own ac­tions and wel­comes back Mr Roberts," he said.

Al-Rawi re­vealed that for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai, then su­per­vi­sor of the Au­dit Unit, had been told there was a need for peo­ple against whom al­le­ga­tions were made to re­spond and that the re­port ought not to be made pub­lic un­til that was done.

He said Howai gave a Ju­ly 18 dead­line for that and pre­sent­ed all of that, "caveat and all," to Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

"She should have known pub­lic air­ing of the re­port pre­ma­ture­ly would have been a breach of law against the of­fi­cials re­gard­ing whom al­le­ga­tions were made... she seems to have done some things very pur­pose­ful­ly, since when Mr Creed was at the Prime Min­is­ter's Of­fice when she was there, she nev­er sent the au­dit re­port to the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion for probe. It was on­ly done un­der the PNM and he re­signed."

Al-Rawi not­ed Robert's res­ig­na­tion let­ter al­so protest­ed the re­port was flawed and lacked nat­ur­al jus­tice prin­ci­ples. Howai didn't re­ply to ques­tions on the judg­ment yes­ter­day, in­clud­ing if he knew the au­dit re­port had not had in­put from Creed and oth­ers.

Au­dit null and void, says lawyer

One of Ash­win Creed's at­tor­neys, Pe­ter Tay­lor, said yes­ter­day the au­dit re­port was now null and void, since its in­tegri­ty had been im­pugned.

Speak­ing dur­ing CNC3's Morn­ing Brew, Tay­lor said it was of "no val­ue" as the au­dit team had not giv­en claimants an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to its al­le­ga­tions.

He said there had al­so been a breach of their ex­pec­ta­tions to be heard in the re­port, not­ing it was not a tech­ni­cal loop­hole that al­lowed the judge to reach her de­ci­sion. Tay­lor said the prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice re­quired in­put from them. But he said the "next thing" that hap­pened was the for­mer prime min­is­ter "was read­ing the re­port in Par­lia­ment."

Tay­lor said, how­ev­er, that Per­sad-Bisses­sar didn't err in re­leas­ing the re­port, since those in au­thor­i­ty should have told her there had not been any op­por­tu­ni­ty for the of­fi­cials to be heard in the re­port.

He said even if the Fi­nance Min­is­ter, gov­ern­ing the au­dit di­vi­sion, want­ed the re­port ur­gent­ly, the au­dit team should have ad­vised him the re­port didn't have the of­fi­cials' side of the sto­ry.

"You can't sac­ri­fice pro­ce­dure and prin­ci­ple on the al­tar of po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy," Tay­lor said, adding the re­port was done hasti­ly.


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