Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day warned those in­volved in cor­rup­tion, fraud and white-col­lar crime to watch out, as the procla­ma­tion of the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion and Dis­trict Crim­i­nal and Traf­fic Courts will now go af­ter wrong­do­ers.

Cab­i­net yes­ter­day agreed that on De­cem­ber 1 the procla­ma­tion will go in­to ef­fect.

The leg­is­la­tion is geared to­wards tack­ling cor­rup­tion and com­plex fraud cas­es and will utilise spe­cialised judges and mag­is­trates to deal with cor­rup­tion and white-col­lar cas­es in court.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Row­ley spoke at length on three is­sues, pro­cure­ment, se­cre­cy and white-col­lar crime and cor­rup­tion, say­ing there was a view by some that “all ah we thief” in re­fer­ring to his Gov­ern­ment.

But in the last three years Row­ley said his Gov­ern­ment has been open and trans­par­ent to the pop­u­la­tion. He said his Gov­ern­ment has been ac­cused of not fol­low­ing prop­er pro­cure­ment process­es and op­er­at­ing in se­cre­cy, but this be­hav­iour was in fact the trade­mark of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Touch­ing on white-col­lar crime, Row­ley said he had no idea how cor­rupt T&T was un­til he as­sumed of­fice in 2015.

“The in­for­ma­tion that comes to me on a reg­u­lar ba­sis in the con­duct of pub­lic af­fairs tells me that the peo­ple of T&T need to be aware of the ex­tent of the in­sid­i­ous cor­rup­tion that per­me­ates this coun­try and its busi­ness…in the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors,” he said.

He said a lot of the pri­vate sec­tor ac­tiv­i­ties were in­ter­re­lat­ed to pub­lic sec­tor busi­ness and “white col­lar crime is a na­tion­al can­cer in T&T” which his Gov­ern­ment in­tends to fight head-on.

“In our so­ci­ety, a large pro­por­tion of our cit­i­zens be­lieve that the law is on­ly ap­plic­a­ble to the down­trod­den and op­pressed in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties and there­fore white-col­lar crime is above the law.”

Row­ley said what this Gov­ern­ment “is do­ing is mak­ing it clear to all cit­i­zens that no­body is above the law,” adding white-col­lar crime was just as detri­men­tal to cit­i­zens’ well-be­ing as the vi­o­lent crimes seen every day.

“And those who be­lieve they could com­mit the white-col­lar crime and get away be­cause the sys­tems don’t work they have an­oth­er thought com­ing be­cause we are chang­ing the sys­tems to make the sys­tem work.”

Row­ley al­so spoke about the ma­jor de­vel­op­ment that oc­curred on Mon­day in­volv­ing one of the biggest cas­es of al­leged white-col­lar crime in T&T to reach the courts. He said the Court of Ap­peal had au­tho­rised the Es­tate Man­age­ment Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­BD) to fol­low the mon­ey in its pur­suit of al­leged wrong­do­ing.

The mat­ter in­volves the EM­BD, where peo­ple are ac­cused of bribery, col­lu­sion and dis­hon­est con­duct in the award of the Ca­roni Road con­tract.

The court ruled that the “EM­BD has suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion to war­rant its re­quest to pur­sue per­sons by fol­low­ing the mon­ey that was paid by the com­pa­ny to cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als for whom Dr Roodal Mooni­lal had re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for.”

A to­tal of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $400 mil­lion was paid out on the eve of the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tions un­der these con­tracts.

The PM said for the first time pub­lic of­fi­cers and their as­so­ciates would be be­fore the court to ac­count for spe­cif­ic ac­tions. He said such a case had se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions.

“It should be pos­si­ble to hold pub­lic of­fice and leave and not be afraid of every po­lice uni­form you see or every siren you hear,” Row­ley said. “I want to let you know this has noth­ing to do with any per­son­al­i­ty.”

Row­ley warned that his Gov­ern­ment was not about “cor­rup­tion talk” but ac­tion. He said they ex­pect many oth­er cor­rup­tion mat­ters to go be­fore the courts.

“Be­cause many oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies have found in­for­ma­tion which they have con­vert­ed to ev­i­dence and have iden­ti­fied per­sons who have ques­tions to an­swer and those mat­ters are to be dealt with prop­er­ly in a place of law,” he said.