Mark Bas­sant

The fam­i­ly mem­bers of Per­cy Thomas are adamant that their nephew Roger Mon­roe the PNM’s can­di­date for To­co/San­gre Grande has been telling half-truths to the me­dia.

They are re­fut­ing al­le­ga­tions that they had aban­doned their ail­ing fa­ther and are al­so ask­ing the po­lice to re­open a fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Mon­roe for al­leged­ly us­ing an ex­pired pow­er of at­tor­ney to with­draw mon­ey from his grand­fa­ther’s (Per­cy Thomas) ac­count two days af­ter he died on Feb­ru­ary 7, 2015.

But on a walk­a­bout in the Va­len­cia area on Wednes­day evening when con­front­ed by Guardian Me­dia in­ves­tiga­tive team with doc­u­ments in hand and asked about the al­le­ga­tions, Mon­roe said “my hands are clean,” and in­di­cat­ed that his lawyers were deal­ing with the mat­ter and could say noth­ing more on the sub­ject.

It was the first time that Mon­roe re­vealed in any mea­sure that he was locked in a le­gal bat­tle with his aunts and un­cles over al­leged fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety.

At least five of Thomas’s chil­dren spoke ex­clu­sive­ly to Guardian Me­dia last week in­di­cat­ing that con­trary to what Mon­roe had told an­oth­er news­pa­per, that there was com­pelling ev­i­dence in their pos­ses­sion to back up their claims about a par­tic­u­lar fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tion he (Mon­roe) con­duct­ed fol­low­ing the pass­ing of their fa­ther.

They were al­so pur­su­ing oth­er le­gal ac­tion as it per­tains to their fa­ther’s mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar es­tate he left be­hind but were told by their lawyers not to ven­ti­late the mat­ter in the pub­lic are­na.

Two months be­fore Per­cy Thomas passed away of stage 4 Lym­phoma, he had a pow­er of at­tor­ney doc­u­ment pre­pared, which Guardian Me­dia ob­tained al­low­ing Mon­roe to ex­e­cute any busi­ness on his be­half or han­dle any bank­ing trans­ac­tions and oth­er busi­ness - but this pow­er of at­tor­ney al­so stat­ed that “and I here­by de­clare that these presents shall con­tin­ue in full force and ef­fect dur­ing the in­ter­val be­tween the date of my death and the date up­on which no­tice in writ­ing of my death is re­ceived...”

Ef­fec­tu­al­ly this meant once Thomas passed away the pow­er of at­tor­ney no longer had any valid le­gal stand­ing.

Two days af­ter Thomas died, on Feb­ru­ary 9, Mon­roe ac­cord­ing to Thomas’s chil­dren at­tempt­ed to with­draw $27,000 from an ac­count in which he (Per­cy) was the sec­ondary hold­er on the ac­count, and his son Dex­ter Thomas the pri­ma­ry hold­er at the RBC San­gre Grande home branch.

Dex­ter Thomas pro­vid­ed Guardian Me­dia with an in­ter­im sum­ma­ry state­ment show­ing trans­ac­tion de­tails of the ac­count from Jan­u­ary 10, 2014 to Feb­ru­ary 25, 2015. “The bank tellers in­formed me about the trans­ac­tion and told Roger Mon­roe he could not re­ceive the mon­ey be­cause dad­dy had died and as you can see they had to cred­it the ac­count back from the state­ment,” ex­plained Dex­ter Thomas.

But hours lat­er, Mon­roe went to the RBC Roy­al Bank branch in Ari­ma on Feb­ru­ary 9, 2016, and with­drew $27,000 from the same ac­count, which bank­ing of­fi­cials had pre­vent­ed him from do­ing ear­li­er that day.

The with­draw­al slip ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia showed that on the slip it was signed Roger Mon­roe “Ino (in care of) for Per­cy Thomas.”

“The rea­son why Roger went to RBC in Ari­ma to with­draw the mon­ey, is be­cause he could not take the mon­ey out from the RBC San­gre Grande home branch be­cause every­one there knew the day my fa­ther died. How could he sign for my fa­ther if he had al­ready died?” ques­tioned an­oth­er one of his sons Dar­ren Thomas.

Thomas’s chil­dren said that they at­tempt­ed for al­most two years to con­vince Mon­roe to re­place the mon­ey and when that did not work they re­port­ed the mat­ter to the Fraud Squad de­part­ment of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

Dex­ter Thomas the pri­ma­ry ac­count hold­er of the RBC ac­count in San­gre Grande wrote to Fraud Squad on De­cem­ber 26, 2016, stat­ing he was dis­put­ing the with­draw­al on $27,000 made from his ac­count by Mon­roe on Feb­ru­ary 9, 2015. In the let­ter that Guardian Me­dia al­so ob­tained Thomas said, “I re­turned home to lay him(my fa­ther) to rest.

On May 25, 2015, dur­ing a rou­tine vis­it to RBC, I learned that my nephew Roger Mon­roe with­out per­mis­sion or au­thor­i­ty ac­cessed my ac­count us­ing an ex­pired “Pow­er of At­tor­ney” two days af­ter my fa­ther’s death. I am ask­ing that this Fraud Squad launch a for­mal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this mat­ter as I have not heard from my nephew re­gard­ing this mat­ter, thus I have not been able to re­cov­er my funds. My nephew has dis­tanced him­self from the rest of the fam­i­ly, and open­ly ad­mits to re­mov­ing these funds from my ac­count.”

On Feb­ru­ary 3, 2017 Dar­ren Thomas made an of­fi­cial po­lice re­port to the Fraud Squad in Port of Spain that was tak­en by a cor­po­ral.

Short­ly there­after an­oth­er cor­po­ral was as­signed to look in­to the case.

Eight months in­to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in ear­ly Oc­to­ber, Mon­roe ap­par­ent­ly re­placed the mon­ey in­to Dex­ter Thomas’s ac­count.

On Oc­to­ber 20, the in­ves­ti­gat­ing cor­po­ral called Dar­ren Thomas and said,” there was noth­ing else the po­lice could do.”

The Thomas fam­i­ly said they were mor­ti­fied by the po­lice ac­tions. “It’s not the putting back of the mon­ey that is trou­bling here, it’s the fact that he al­leged­ly used an ex­pired doc­u­ment to with­draw the mon­ey and that’s where the prob­lem lies,” said Dex­ter Thomas while speak­ing to us on a zoom meet­ing with his sib­lings ear­ly last week.

The fam­i­ly claimed that the in­ves­ti­gat­ing cor­po­ral in ques­tion who halt­ed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion had in the past tak­en loans from their fa­ther- who was al­so a mon­ey lender and they al­so claimed the cor­po­ral might have re­ceived some form of in­duce­ment.

Fol­low­ing this lat­est de­vel­op­ment, Dar­ren Thomas said he vis­it­ed the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau (PSB) in ear­ly 2018 and made a re­port about the sus­pect­ed con­duct of the cor­po­ral in the mat­ter.

The PSB in­ves­ti­gates er­rant po­lice of­fi­cers.

Thomas said to date the PSB has not re­spond­ed.

He al­so sub­mit­ted a let­ter to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty on April 29, 2019.

On May 31, 2019, the PCA wrote back in­di­cat­ing that they were un­able to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter be­cause more than a year had passed.

The PCA’s let­ter to Dar­ren Thomas stat­ed, “Af­ter read­ing your re­port and care­ful­ly con­sid­er­ing its con­tents, it has been de­ter­mined that while the al­le­ga­tions con­tained in the re­port may fall with­in the PCA’s in­ves­tiga­tive re­mit, it does not fall with­in the year lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od un­der Sec­tion 27(1) of the Act nor are there any spe­cial cir­cum­stances which make it prop­er for the PCA to con­duct an in­ves­ti­ga­tion un­der Sec­tion 27(2) of the Act.”

The Thomas fam­i­ly said that the po­lice should re­open the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Mon­roe and plead­ed with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith to pe­ruse the doc­u­ments sub­mit­ted to the Fraud Squad and PSB.

“We have al­ways been good to Roger, he grew up with us all and we treat­ed him well,” said Karen Thomas speak­ing from her home in the Unit­ed States last week.

Sev­er­al pic­tures were pro­vid­ed by the fam­i­ly show­ing Munroe and his un­cles and aunts in hap­pi­er times in the years gone by.

It was on­ly when their fa­ther was di­ag­nosed in 2014, that the re­la­tion­ship be­tween them and Mon­roe be­came frosty.

The fam­i­ly who had spo­ken to Guardian Me­dia at least three weeks be­fore he was nom­i­nat­ed as the can­di­date for that area by the PNM said they had been try­ing for years to set the record straight and gave Munroe nu­mer­ous chances to rec­on­cile dif­fer­ences and “do the right thing.”

They strong­ly main­tained they had no po­lit­i­cal agen­da in this mat­ter. They mere­ly want­ed to clear their fam­i­ly’s name that they claimed was taint­ed by Mon­roe.

“I would like the peo­ple of To­co/San­gre Grande to know that Roger Mon­roe was very un­fair to his fam­i­ly. My fam­i­ly just wants it to be trans­par­ent and fair to us be­fore he rep­re­sents the peo­ple of To­co/San­gre Grande,” said Dex­ter Thomas.

Karen Thomas, one of his aunts said, “We all trust­ed Roger but when Dad­dy was sick I no­ticed that Roger start­ed act­ing fun­ny and when he passed away he was with­drawn to us and tried to bury dad­dy be­fore we even got home. Two things we learned from the two mil­lion things Dad­dy thought us was fam­i­ly, fam­i­ly, fam­i­ly, and prin­ci­ple you need to re­mem­ber that Roger.”

An­oth­er aunt Dawn Thomas al­so re­sid­ing abroad said they were hurt by the state­ments made by Mon­roe, “I love my nephew Roger Mon­roe very much but I am very dis­ap­point­ed with him. You be­trayed our trust as a fam­i­ly. I was the aunt that was there with you al­ways when you moved to San­gre Grande I know that you are ful­ly aware that my par­ents Per­cy and Yvonne worked hard and start­ed 99 per cent of the busi­ness with­out any shame you said Dad­dy gave you every­thing. Dex­ter, Karen, Paula, and I was there with my par­ents with old­er chil­dren. Even David and Dar­ren came along to help. Roger, you can­not be a PNM can­di­date- with­out be­ing fair, hon­est and loy­al and make PNM proud and not dis­ap­point them and be fair to your fam­i­ly.”

An­oth­er one of Mon­roe’s aunts Daisha Thomas based in At­lanta, USA said she ini­tial­ly post­ed the mes­sage on Face­book about Mon­roe. “I fig­ured that was the on­ly way we could be heard it was a need to vent our frus­tra­tion as a way Roger Mon­roe pro­fess­ing to be his broth­er’s keep­er while he left his fam­i­ly hang­ing. My mo­tive was to bring aware­ness to the PNM par­ty and to the con­stituents of San­gre Grande/To­co. It is very un­set­tling for me to con­sid­er that this per­son void of a moral com­pass would be elect­ed to lead in any ca­pac­i­ty. What you all are see­ing now and dur­ing the cam­paign is what we saw for years lead­ing up to dad­dy’s pass­ing,” said Daisha.

The Thomas fam­i­ly said they were al­so deal­ing with an­oth­er le­gal mat­ter con­cern­ing Mon­roe and their fa­ther’s es­tate.

They say they were ad­vised by their at­tor­neys not to speak in de­tail about the mat­ter but said Mon­roe was ex­pect­ed to re­ceive a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter from their lawyers any day now.

Roger Mon­roe was ques­tioned about the al­le­ga­tions by Guardian Me­dia and fol­low­ing is the ex­change:

Mark Bas­sant (MB): One of the things they claim is that you used an ex­pired pow­er of at­tor­ney to with­draw mon­ey from his(Per­cy Thomas) Roy­al Bank ac­count which I have here with me. You first went to the San­gre Grande branch where you were told by the tellers be­cause he had died on Feb­ru­ary 7th that you could not with­draw.

Roger Mon­roe (RM): So what I can tell you is that mat­ter is be­fore the hands of my at­tor­ney and I will leave that right there.

MB: But you went that said day to the Ari­ma branch......(Mon­roe in­ter­rupts)

RM: That mat­ter is at the hands of my at­tor­neys and I don’t want to jeop­ar­dize any­thing I leave that right there.

MB: But this is your sig­na­ture here for Mr Thomas know­ing that he al­ready died. This is what I am ask­ing.

RM: Sir that mat­ter is at the hands of my at­tor­ney and I have been in­struct­ed not to make any com­ments.2:40

MB: Ob­vi­ous­ly your con­stituents want some­body who is trans­par­ent and fair to them and how does this af­fect your abil­i­ty see­ing in light of these al­le­ga­tions be­ing made by your close fam­i­ly mem­bers.

RM: As you said ear­li­er on its al­le­ga­tions my hands are clean and all will be re­vealed in due time, sir.

When Mon­roe was ques­tioned about why the re­la­tion­ship be­tween his aunts and un­cles in the Thomas fam­i­ly had grown apart, he said, “I have no com­ment.”