In prepa­ra­tion for the clo­sure of Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery, crit­i­cal doc­u­ments have gone miss­ing and/or are be­ing re­moved and de­stroyed, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­port­ed to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar wrote Grif­fith on Wednes­day call­ing on the po­lice to seek court as­sis­tance to pre­serve the ev­i­dence con­cern­ing the al­leged “fake oil is­sue and AV Oil and Gas Com­pa­ny Ltd.”

She said she feared “an on­go­ing at­tempt to un­der­mine the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions and process­es de­signed to up­hold the rule of law.”

“It has come to my at­ten­tion that in prepa­ra­tion for the clo­sure of the re­fin­ery, elec­tron­ic doc­u­ments, crit­i­cal re­ports, sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta sheets, tech­ni­cal time­line da­ta sur­veys and con­fi­den­tial em­ploy­ee state­ments have gone miss­ing and/or are be­ing re­moved and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly de­stroyed,” she said in the let­ter.

“Such ac­tions car­ry the re­al risk of com­pro­mis­ing the on­go­ing crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion by var­i­ous or­gans of the Po­lice Ser­vice. Equal­ly se­ri­ous is the fact that such ac­tions amount to the com­mis­sion of fur­ther crim­i­nal of­fences, in­clud­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, the ob­struc­tion of an on­go­ing crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion and per­vert­ing the course of jus­tice.”

She added, “This ev­i­dence will be cru­cial to any pros­e­cu­tion that may arise out of your in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to these mat­ters and fail­ure to do so will al­low those who may be in breach of the crim­i­nal law to es­cape.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar gave a de­tailed back­ground of the al­le­ga­tions against Petrotrin Cat­shill field lease Op­er­a­tor A&V Oil and Gas Ltd., which were first made pub­lic in Sep­tem­ber of last year.

The al­le­ga­tions, she not­ed, arose out of a re­port pro­duced by Petrotrin’s Au­dit Com­mit­tee. She said the in­ter­nal au­dit’s opin­ion that the pur­chase of non-ex­is­tent crude from Cat­shill was the main con­tribut­ing fac­tor to Petrotrin re­ceiv­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly less oil than the vol­umes record­ed by the Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion de­part­ment. The re­port es­ti­mat­ed Petrotrin would have over­paid A&V Oil and Gas Ltd. some US$11.5 mil­lion

Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that the mat­ter was re­ferred by Petrotrin’s board to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions. But she said the DPP doesn’t have the pow­er to in­ves­ti­gate crim­i­nal con­duct to de­ter­mine any in­fringe­ment of law, jus­ti­fy­ing pros­e­cu­tion. She said it was, how­ev­er, un­der­stood the po­lice have start­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the mat­ter was im­por­tant not on­ly be­cause of the quan­tum of mon­ey in­volved but it’s al­leged “a cal­cu­lat­ed, in­ten­tion­al and de­lib­er­ate fraud­u­lent scheme to de­fraud Petrotrin was in­volved.” She not­ed the Prime Min­is­ter al­so said the prin­ci­pal of A&V Oil and Gas Ltd. was his friend.

“Such state­ments hold po­ten­tial to give the im­pres­sion that such per­sons would be af­ford­ed pref­er­en­tial treat­ment from the au­thor­i­ties. The Prime Min­is­ter’s ac­tion will cer­tain­ly re­sult in the un­der­min­ing the al­ready low con­fi­dence that the pop­u­la­tion has in the po­lice ser­vice,” she added.