Raphael John-Lall

There is the per­cep­tion glob­al­ly that T&T may be more cor­rupt than oth­er coun­tries, says Arnold Ni­ran­jan, Ser­vice Line leader, Ad­vi­so­ry Fraud In­ves­ti­ga­tion, Ernst & Young. "Do we have a fraud prob­lem in T&T? Based on Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al's sur­vey in 2011 they placed T&T at 91 with a score of 3.2 and T&T dropped from 3.6 in 2010. This is the low­est score since T&T was in­clud­ed in 2001. On this scale, ze­ro means very cor­rupt and ten means clean and we are placed un­der 5," he said.

He was speak­ing yes­ter­day at a sem­i­nar host­ed by Ernst & Young on Fraud In­ves­ti­ga­tions at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain. Ac­cord­ing to the fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tion and dis­pute brochure that was pre­sent­ed at the sem­i­nar, there are more than 1,000 fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tion and dis­pute ser­vices pro­fes­sion­als through the glob­al Ernst and Young net­work that in­ves­ti­gate al­leged mis­con­duct, mea­sure the fi­nan­cial im­pli­ca­tions of dis­putes and help find ways to man­age risks.

Ni­ran­jan said ac­cord­ing to Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al's 2011 Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tion In­dex (CPI) T&T is be­hind oth­er coun­tries in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca like Bar­ba­dos and Brazil in deal­ing with cor­rup­tion. "Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al's CPI sug­gests that cor­rup­tion in T&T is not com­pre­hen­sive­ly ad­dressed. T&T is not ex­act­ly in an en­vi­able po­si­tion," he said.

He ques­tioned whether it is a slow mov­ing le­gal sys­tem in T&T that is re­spon­si­ble for cas­es of fraud not be­ing dealt with quick­ly enough. "We have the leg­is­la­tion and there are sev­er­al pieces of them in the le­gal sys­tem that deal with cor­rup­tion. There are cas­es that are still wait­ing to be tried. Is it that there is ap­a­thy and dis­in­ter­est? It is not that we do not have le­gal lu­mi­nar­ies or that we do not have leg­is­la­tion. It is not that we do not have leg­is­la­tion when we look at the his­to­ry of in­ac­tion," he said.