Richard?Lord

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport, Ash­win Creed, can now put the spec­tre of the con­tro­ver­sial Life Sport pro­gramme be­hind as he has gone home on pre-re­tire­ment leave.This was con­firmed by the Head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Reynold Coop­er yes­ter­day.Creed has been on ex­tend­ed leave of ab­sence since May and will re­main on pre-re­tire­ment leave un­til April next year, Coop­er told the T&T Guardian.

This means Creed will ef­fec­tive­ly not re­turn to work un­til he at­tains re­tire­ment age.At­tor­ney for Creed, Pe­ter Tay­lor, a for­mer le­gal af­fairs min­is­ter, has said that Creed was at­tend­ing to fam­i­ly busi­ness in the Unit­ed States and has had to seek ex­tend­ed leave to com­plete the mat­ter.Creed was one of the Sport Min­istry of­fi­cials who were ques­tioned dur­ing the au­dit in­to the pro­gramme af­ter claims it was plagued by fraud, theft, ques­tion­able pay­ments and oth­er crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

He was asked to re­turn home from the US in Ju­ly to be ques­tioned by the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my's cen­tral au­dit com­mit­tee.The re­port was sub­se­quent­ly pre­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment on Ju­ly 25 by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.Af­ter giv­ing the de­tails of what she called a damn­ing re­port to the House, Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced its im­me­di­ate ter­mi­na­tion and said:

"For those who re­al­ly sought to im­prove their lives and pos­i­tive­ly ben­e­fit from this pro­gramme, I am sor­ry that this had to hap­pen."I have ac­cept­ed the rec­om­men­da­tions of the au­dit com­mit­tee and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has been in­struct­ed to turn the re­port over to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to in­ves­ti­gate, de­tain and pros­e­cute those guilty to the fullest ex­tent of the law.

"Giv­en the fact that the Cen­tral Au­dit Com­mit­tee has raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty of com­plic­i­ty by min­istry of­fi­cials, the re­port will be sent to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and the head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion, con­sid­er­a­tion and ac­tion."

Coop­er al­so re­ceived a copy of the re­port for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Anil Roberts, who was the Min­is­ter of Sport, days lat­er re­signed as min­is­ter and MP with im­me­di­ate ef­fect and has vowed to clear his name.The al­le­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing were al­leged­ly com­mit­ted while the pro­gramme was un­der Roberts's port­fo­lio. It was lat­er re­moved to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry and dis­band­ed.Roberts was tem­porar­i­ly re­placed by Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Min­is­ter Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith. No per­ma­nent ap­point­ment has been made.

At­tempts to con­tact Creed and Tay­lor were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.

PS trans­ferred again

Mean­while, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Ju­liana Jo­han-Boodram, who was trans­ferred to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter from the Tourism Min­istry in June, af­ter trav­el­ling to Ar­genti­na as part of a T&T del­e­ga­tion to watch the So­ca War­riors play Ar­genti­na with­out in­form­ing Coop­er, is now at the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.At the Of­fice of the PM, Jo­han-Boodram act­ed as ac­count­ing of­fi­cer dur­ing Coop­er's ab­sence in Ju­ly.

Coop­er had re­ferred Jo­han-Boodram to the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) for in­ves­ti­ga­tion fol­low­ing her ab­sence with­out per­mis­sion but no in­for­ma­tion has been re­leased from the PSC to date. She is due to go on va­ca­tion leave on Mon­day.Coop­er yes­ter­day con­firmed she had been "as­signed" to the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.Jo­han-Boodram said she for­got to tell Coop­er about the trip but it was not at the ex­pense of the state.