Bac­cha­nal over Roodal Mooni­lal!

That’s what erupt­ed in­side - and out­side - of the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Roodal Mooni­lal sound­ed off sep­a­rate­ly con­cern­ing al­le­ga­tions Mooni­lal made on Tues­day, query­ing al­leged links be­tween Row­ley, a Mi­a­mi bank ac­count and Vidya De­ok­iesingh.

“There is ab­solute­ly no truth to what the Mem­ber for Oropouche East has stat­ed and/or im­put­ed,” Row­ley de­clared in a per­son­al ex­pla­na­tion to Par­lia­ment dur­ing the 2019 Bud­get de­bate.

Row­ley’s de­nial was part of yes­ter­day’s “fire­works” be­tween Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion. This was sparked by Mooni­lal’s con­tri­bu­tion in Tues­day’s Bud­get de­bate, where he made the bank ac­count al­le­ga­tions and spelt out Row­ley’s name.

Gov­ern­ment, say­ing the al­le­ga­tions are un­true, yes­ter­day moved im­me­di­ate­ly to have Par­lia­ment’s Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee in­ves­ti­gate Mooni­lal’s al­le­ga­tions as a “se­ri­ous mat­ter of high con­tempt.”

Mooni­lal, how­ev­er, has stood “strong­ly” by his al­le­ga­tions.

The sce­nario un­fold­ed pri­or to Par­lia­ment when Row­ley and his at­tor­ney Michael Quam­i­na held a brief­ing with­in Par­lia­ment’s of­fices at 11 am deny­ing Mooni­lal’s al­le­ga­tions on Tues­day.

When Mooni­lal ar­rived at Par­lia­ment two hours lat­er, he al­so held a brief­ing - on the pave­ment. Mooni­lal said he stood by his state­ments, adding he ex­pect­ed Row­ley’s de­nial.

On the al­le­ga­tions Mooni­lal added, “I take the same po­si­tion Dr Row­ley did on the pur­port­ed Email­gate is­sue - he said it came to his at­ten­tion, he didn’t know if it was true or not, but he’d raised it in the pub­lic in­ter­est and called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“We’re not de­tec­tives or po­lice. When we get in­for­ma­tion we raise it de­pend­ing on the grav­i­ty - for this we’re call­ing for a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties.”

He said he couldn’t com­mand over­seas agen­cies like the FBI to ver­i­fy the al­leged in­for­ma­tion,” but we’ve raised it in the pub­lic do­main. They’re very se­ri­ous mat­ters, I be­lieve they de­serve fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

Mooni­lal said he’ll al­so co-op­er­ate with any probe on it. But not­ing Row­ley’s com­ments at his ear­li­er brief­ing, Mooni­lal said the PM couldn’t “in­struct” the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to in­ves­ti­gate, speak­ing from a press con­fer­ence, but would have to re­port the mat­ter to a po­lice sta­tion or write and re­quest a probe.

“I hope Cap­tain Gary Grif­fith’s aware of that. Nor can the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al probe this mat­ter in­volv­ing his boss, who pays for his meals. And the Prime Min­is­ter can­not ask the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) - they have no ju­ris­dic­tion in Mi­a­mi.”

He said he re­sist­ed call­ing Row­ley’s name on Tues­day since the Bud­get de­bate wasn’t a sub­stan­tive mo­tion on Row­ley. But Mooni­lal was par­tic­u­lar­ly irked by the pres­ence of Row­ley’s at­tor­ney at the PM’s brief­ing.

“This was a stranger to the Par­lia­ment, threat­en­ing me - a sit­ting MP - with le­gal ac­tion. Par­lia­ment was to­day used to op­press free­dom of speech. He’s rude, fast and out of place to come to Par­lia­ment and seek to in­tim­i­date me - I rep­ri­mand Dr Row­ley for that. I’ve raised it with the Clerk of the House. We may have to take a Priv­i­leges Mo­tion against Dr Row­ley or sum­mon the per­son back to Par­lia­ment,” he said.

“I won’t be in­tim­i­dat­ed, ha­rassed or muz­zled from do­ing my du­ty. These mat­ters (al­le­ga­tions) speak to in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs. In com­ing days I’ll dis­cuss with my par­ty, leader and lawyers and de­cide on the next step - the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion is among sev­er­al op­tions in T&T and out­side.”

Bo­gus doc­u­ments—PM

Half hour af­ter Mooni­lal’s com­ment, when Par­lia­ment be­gan, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley re­peat­ed re­but­tals to what he said were “spu­ri­ous and whol­ly un­true al­le­ga­tions” by Mooni­lal.

He re­called that on De­cem­ber 15, 2017, Mooni­lal had al­leged that a “very se­nior gov­ern­ment min­is­ter” was in­volved in the mat­ter in­volv­ing AV Drilling and Petrotrin, but Mooni­lal was forced to with­draw it.

Row­ley said Mooni­lal had claimed he’d vis­it­ed Flori­da to con­duct re­search and he was asked to “take own­er­ship” of his al­le­ga­tion that he (Row­ley) was in­volved “in some ne­far­i­ous bank trans­ac­tion in­volv­ing the trans­fer of a sum of mon­ey to me in a bank ac­count in Mi­a­mi” and that the ev­i­dence was in an email that Mooni­lal had.

Then, Row­ley said Mooni­lal “with­drew” with­out pro­duc­ing a copy of the email, but “the dam­age and harm he in­tend­ed to cause in a most ma­li­cious man­ner was al­ready done.”

Row­ley said on Tues­day, Mooni­lal once again en­gaged in the same be­hav­iour un­der cov­er of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege.

Be­fore Mooni­lal spoke, Row­ley said Mooni­lal’s col­league, De­vant Ma­haraj, cir­cu­lat­ed so­cial me­dia mes­sages for peo­ple to lis­ten to Mooni­lal who’d promised “fire­works.” Row­ley not­ed, “... Clear ev­i­dence of col­lu­sion and mal­ice.”

Row­ley said Mooni­lal then made his al­le­ga­tions and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in­ter­vened ask­ing Mooni­lal to take own­er­ship of his al­le­ga­tions.

Row­ley added, “There was games­man­ship dis­played and re­luc­tance on the part of Dr Mooni­lal to bolt his al­le­ga­tions against me to his chest. Even­tu­al­ly, un­der much pres­sure, he said,“… that the two names I have here, ad­di­tion­al in­struc­tions, At­ten­tion, V-I-D-Y-A D-E-O-K-I-E-S-I-N-G-H and the sec­ond name, K-E-I-T-H R-O-W-L-E-Y.”

Row­ley added, “The mem­ber ver­bal­ly iden­ti­fied me but in­ten­tion­al­ly failed to pro­vide a copy of any sin­gle doc­u­ment to sup­port his al­le­ga­tions against me. How­ev­er, min­utes af­ter he spoke, pieces of the defam­a­to­ry doc­u­ments were broad­cast world­wide by in­di­vid­u­als and agents, in­clud­ing oth­er mem­bers of the House.

“What the mem­ber did was care­ful­ly, in­ten­tion­al­ly and ma­li­cious­ly cal­cu­lat­ed to de­fame me, dam­age me (and my rep­u­ta­tion). He im­put­ed im­pro­pri­ety to me and pro­vid­ed on­ly bo­gus doc­u­ments. This is un­ac­cept­able and can­not be left un­chal­lenged. I state here, there is ab­solute­ly NO truth to what the mem­ber for Oropouche East has stat­ed and/or im­put­ed.

“I have no bank ac­count in Mi­a­mi, USA; I was not par­ty to any bank­ing trans­ac­tion with Mr De­ok­iesingh, For­mu­la One Trad­ing or any per­son or per­sons with re­spect to any bank in Flori­da, the Unit­ed States, or any bank in the world for that mat­ter.”

Row­ley chal­lenged Mooni­lal to pro­vide the bank doc­u­ment to Par­lia­ment and the me­dia out­side of Par­lia­ment.

“I’ve ob­served that as he’s tak­en own­er­ship of his per­for­mance with­in these walls he’s since con­firmed his li­bel out­side. The treat­ment of this de­vel­op­ment is for an­oth­er day in an­oth­er place,” the PM said.

He said he’s in­struct­ed his at­tor­neys to write to the Mi­a­mi bank to ob­tain from them, con­fir­ma­tion that he’s nev­er done any bank­ing with them “....what­so­ev­er - be­cause this is the truth!”

Row­ley added, “The email that the mem­ber re­ferred to and that I’ve seen be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed by UNC mem­bers, does not in­volve me, the email ad­dress is not mine. It is jrow­ley.rawl­ins@gmail.com. That is not my email.”

Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment MPs will pur­sue the “ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion” against Mooni­lal, and he’ll seek le­gal ad­vice on what ac­tion “I can pur­sue out­side of Par­lia­ment against those who have re­pub­lished these fab­ri­ca­tions.”

ROW­LEY LISTS WHAT MOONI­LAL AL­LEGED

• That Mooni­lal had been trav­el­ling to Mi­a­mi (sim­i­lar to what he said in De­cem­ber 2017) on a few oc­ca­sions be­cause he “had wind of some­thing.”

• He claimed he had in­for­ma­tion, “that point­ed [him] to a bank in Flori­da C&C In­ter­na­tion­al Re­gents Bank Ac­count 0229459435 ABA062005690 swift code UPN­BUS44MIA, 8200 North West 36 St Do­ral Flori­da, 33166.”

• He had a bank doc­u­ment, that showed “a ben­e­fi­cia­ry ac­count num­ber IBAN for­eign with a num­ber 1145145 No pur­pose of funds, so it is a trans­fer doc­u­ment ben­e­fi­cia­ry re­cip­i­ents, no pur­pose of funds, but ad­di­tion­al in­struc­tions for at­ten­tion.”

• Mooni­lal al­leged, “There are two names here. One is Vidya De­ok­iesingh and a bank in Flori­da. … The sec­ond name I can­not call in Par­lia­ment. I can­not. The sec­ond name I can­not call. But you see, Madame Speak­er, I can­not call the sec­ond name but I asked a week or two ago. I asked the Mem­ber for Diego Mar­tin West whether he had any in­ter­est in AV Drilling… Madame Speak­er, Vidya De­ok­iesingh and an­oth­er name which I can­not call is here on a piece of pa­per be­fore me with a ben­e­fi­cia­ry ac­count For­mu­la One Trad­ing. Madame Speak­er, all I am ask­ing to Vidya De­ok­iesingh and an­oth­er un­named per­son is, what busi­ness did you have with Vidya De­ok­iesingh?”

• Af­ter Gov­ern­ment pressed him to take own­er­ship of the mat­ter, Mooni­lal al­leged,”… that the two names I have here, ad­di­tion­al in­struc­tions, At­ten­tion, V-I-D-Y-A D-E-O-K-I-E-S-I-N-G-H and the sec­ond name, K-E-I-T-H R-O-W-L-E-Y. I have read it Madame Speak­er.”

Row­ley, in his state­ment added, “The mem­ber has a modus operan­di that when­ev­er he comes to par­lia­ment and hides be­hind par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege to ma­lign me or any oth­er mem­ber, he does not pro­vide any doc­u­ment to you or the House, but al­most in­stan­ta­neous­ly, the al­le­ga­tion and any doc­u­ment that he pur­port­ed­ly has in his pos­ses­sion ap­pears on Face­book and oth­er so­cial me­dia it is then cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia by primed per­sons as­so­ci­at­ed with the UNC Op­po­si­tion and on Face­book pages con­trolled by the UNC Op­po­si­tion. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, se­lect­ed sound-bite video record­ings of his con­tri­bu­tion where he abus­es par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege is al­so cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia. I sub­mit. this is cal­cu­lat­ed to dam­age me ir­repara­bly.”