Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will join world lead­ers next month at an an­ti-cor­rup­tion con­fer­ence in Lon­don sched­uled to dis­cuss the is­sue of ben­e­fi­cial own­er­ship of trusts and the need for de­c­la­ra­tion of who re­al­ly owns the com­pa­nies in such sit­u­a­tions.

In an­nounc­ing Row­ley's trip to the UK yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter in the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's Of­fice/Le­gal Af­fairs, Stu­art Young, said those in­ter­na­tion­al dis­cus­sions would fit quite ap­pro­pri­ate­ly with the leaked rev­e­la­tions of the "Pana­ma Pa­pers" now mak­ing head­lines across the world.

Leaked doc­u­ments from Pana­ma's Mossak Fon­se­ca law firm have caused glob­al waves by spot­light­ing off­shore hold­ings of past and present world lead­ers, busi­ness peo­ple, sports and oth­er per­son­al­i­ties in over 200 ter­ri­to­ries for the past 30 years.

Doc­u­ments al­so al­leged­ly chron­i­cle op­er­a­tions of one­time Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress of­fi­cial and for­mer CEO of the Warn­er Group of Com­pa­nies, Ken Em­rith.

The Lon­don con­fer­ence, which British Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron last year in­vit­ed Row­ley to at­tend, will be one of sev­er­al en­gage­ments Row­ley has over­seas over May 2-14, when he un­der­takes se­cu­ri­ty, an­ti-cor­rup­tion and en­er­gy-re­lat­ed trips to the US, Ghana and Lon­don re­spec­tive­ly.

At yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence, Young said the PM would leave on May 2, lead­ing a Cari­com del­e­ga­tion which has been in­vit­ed to a Wash­ing­ton, USA, en­er­gy and se­cu­ri­ty con­fer­ence from May 3- 4, which will be host­ed by US Vice-Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

Row­ley then heads to New York on May 4 for an an­nu­al awards func­tion at Medgar Evers Col­lege, City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York on May 5. The col­lege's stu­dent pop­u­la­tion is 23 per cent T&T.

On May 7, Row­ley cross­es to the UK to con­tin­ue hy­dro-car­bon dis­cus­sions with BP CEO Robert Dud­ley.

The PM then leaves on May 8 for an of­fi­cial state vis­it, un­til May 11, to Ghana, on the in­vi­ta­tion of Ghana's Pres­i­dent, John Dra­mani Ma­hama, who had in­vit­ed Row­ley when both lead­ers at­tend­ed last year's Com­mon­wealth Lead­ers' Sum­mit.

The Ghana agen­da in­cludes bi­lat­er­al talks on in­vest­ment, in­sti­tu­tion­al co-op­er­a­tion, gov­er­nance, trans­fer of tech­nol­o­gy and ex­plo­ration of en­er­gy in­vest­ment-shar­ing and how T&T can as­sist Ghana.

Young said a lo­cal pri­vate sec­tor del­e­ga­tion, be­ing worked out, would ac­com­pa­ny Row­ley. He not­ed Re­pub­lic Bank had Ghana in­vest­ments.

Row­ley's fi­nal stop is Lon­don for the May 12 an­ti-cor­rup­tion sum­mit, host­ed by British PM David Cameron, whom Young said had per­son­al­ly in­vit­ed Row­ley when both at­tend­ed the 2015 CHOGM.

Young said that con­fer­ence would make it eas­i­er for the flow of in­for­ma­tion need­ed to com­bat in­ter­na­tion­al cor­rup­tion. On May 13, Young said T&T would meet heads of an­ti-cor­rup­tion units.

Young, who will ac­com­pa­ny the PM to this con­fer­ence, said the sum­mit came at an in­ter­est­ing pe­ri­od con­sid­er­ing what was un­fold­ing on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage con­cern­ing cor­rup­tion.

Say­ing the Pana­ma Pa­pers' rev­e­la­tions con­cern­ing T&T na­tion­als had come to Gov­ern­ment's at­ten­tion, he added: "Gov­ern­ment is look­ing on keen­ly, (but) law en­force­ment re­al­ly are the ones that have to take up the in­ves­ti­ga­tions with re­spect to this.

"And it is very fresh and it is very new but cer­tain con­ver­sa­tions can and should take place as to how we can as­sist law en­force­ment in deal­ing with any in­ves­ti­ga­tions."

Young said costs for the PM's two-week trips were be­ing worked out but not­ed that the mis­sion was jus­ti­fied since Gov­ern­ment had to take steps to see what could be done out­side of T&T and pur­sue se­cu­ri­ty, en­er­gy-re­lat­ed and an­ti-cor­rup­tion mat­ters. He said a pro­ject­ed Chi­na trip by the PM was not yet in the works but was not "off the ta­ble."

Dil­lon look­sat cops'com­pen­sa­tion

Young added yes­ter­day Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon had been man­dat­ed to ex­am­ine the for­mer PP ad­min­is­tra­tion's promise to pay $1 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion to po­lice of­fi­cers killed in the line of du­ty, since the PP had not left any mech­a­nism in place to im­ple­ment that.

He was com­ment­ing on queries over whether such monies would be paid to the fam­i­ly of PC An­son Ben­jamin, who died yes­ter­day af­ter be­ing shot while re­spond­ing to a trou­ble call in Ste Madeleine on Sat­ur­day.

Young said Dil­lon would give his rec­om­men­da­tions on the pro­pos­al to Gov­ern­ment.