An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Days af­ter he went pub­lic with claims of a long-run­ning bribery rack­et at the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der is ex­pect­ed to hand over doc­u­ments to se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials to sup­port fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Con­firm­ing this yes­ter­day while ad­dress­ing re­porters dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro said he had been made aware of the mat­ter fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions with Alexan­der on Wednes­day.

Gue­var­ro said the min­is­ter had since “un­der­tak­en to sub­mit some doc­u­men­ta­tion to my of­fice.”

Alexan­der’s dis­clo­sure cen­tred on al­le­ga­tions of a cor­rup­tion rack­et with­in the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, in which both of­fi­cials and em­ploy­ees are said to have been in­volved. He claimed that mil­lions of dol­lars had been paid over the years in ex­change for cit­i­zen­ship, res­i­den­cy per­mits, work per­mits and pass­port ap­point­ments.

Among the most se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions is that some of­fi­cials al­leged­ly charged for­eign na­tion­als up­wards of $90,000 for res­i­den­cy doc­u­ments and work per­mits in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The min­is­ter said the al­leged rack­et had gone un­de­tect­ed for years due to weak ac­count­abil­i­ty and in­ad­e­quate mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems.