The long-run­ning Drug Sou-Sou saga took yet an­oth­er turn yes­ter­day af­ter founder Ker­ron Clarke claimed that while there are sev­er­al busi­ness­es sim­i­lar to his across the coun­try, for some rea­son the DSS has found it­self con­tin­u­ous­ly tar­get­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice.

“I have suf­fered loss of busi­ness and ex­pe­ri­enced dis­crim­i­na­tion by un­der­hand in­sti­tu­tions. What am I do­ing? What am I do­ing wrong? That’s the ma­jor ques­tion I’m ask­ing,” Clarke said dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Port-of-Spain of­fices of his at­tor­neys.

Clarke, who didn’t take ques­tions from the me­dia, al­so ex­pressed be­wil­der­ment that po­lice of­fi­cers who al­leged­ly stole mon­ey from his busi­ness had faced no crim­i­nal charges to date.

He said de­spite there be­ing ev­i­dence of po­lice wrong­do­ing, his busi­ness, which he claimed on­ly en­gages in le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties, con­tin­ues to be vic­timised by the TTPS.

“It’s not a crime for any­one to take their hard-earned mon­ey and place it any­where they choose to, up­on their free time,” Clarke said.

Clarke al­so de­nied claims that he sought a meet­ing with Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith seek­ing to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion about the in­volve­ment of po­lice of­fi­cers in the DSS in ex­change for im­mu­ni­ty.

“I’m not seek­ing asy­lum any­where, nor have I agreed to seek asy­lum to pass any in­for­ma­tion any­where,” the DSS founder said.

Ac­cord­ing to Clarke, it was the po­lice ser­vice who was at­tempt­ing to en­cour­age him to give up names but said he didn’t have any in­for­ma­tion to give.

He claimed a record­ed phone call with Grif­fith, a po­lice of­fi­cer and Guardian Me­dia Lead In­ves­tiga­tive Ed­i­tor Mark Bas­sant was ev­i­dence of that. He, how­ev­er, did not play or pro­duce the record­ing dur­ing his state­ment.

Clarke ac­cused Bas­sant of giv­ing in­ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion in a re­port that claimed he was will­ing to ex­change in­for­ma­tion for im­mu­ni­ty.

“Mr Bas­sant, who I had a great re­spect for, has now sought to va­cate him­self from that con­ver­sa­tion - which has al­so placed a tar­get on my back. We have proof of the con­ver­sa­tion, so he can­not come out and say he wasn’t part of it, or that the in­for­ma­tion I have giv­en is false,” Clarke claimed.

Guardian Me­dia was not in­vit­ed to yes­ter­day’s press con­fer­ence.

Bas­sant, Grif­fith re­spond

In re­sponse, how­ev­er, GML in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Bas­sant strong­ly de­nied Clarke’s claims. He said the DSS own­er con­tact­ed a source of his seek­ing to or­gan­ise a meet­ing with him­self and the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er. Clarke ex­pressed a will­ing­ness to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion in ex­change for im­mu­ni­ty from pos­si­ble charges and po­lice pro­tec­tion, Bas­sant in­sist­ed.

“The source reached out to me and asked if I could fa­cil­i­tate that with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, and I called the Com­mis­sion­er and told him what was sug­gest­ed and the Com­mis­sion­er said if he (Clarke) has in­for­ma­tion, he was will­ing to lis­ten and meet with him,” Bas­sant said.

“It was a meet­ing. It wasn’t any­thing about be­ing caught on tape but rather a dis­cus­sion to find out how he would as­sist with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, as the con­ver­sa­tion would have shown at length.”

Ac­cord­ing to Bas­sant, he arranged the four-per­son call with Clarke, a source and Grif­fith be­cause the DSS founder claimed he trust­ed him (Bas­sant) to make the nec­es­sary arrange­ments.

“There are What­sapp mes­sages and calls that he (the source) would have made to Mr Clarke and he would have spo­ken to Mr Clarke, and Mr Clarke was will­ing to give in­for­ma­tion, of cer­tain things that were put in place. I was mere­ly try­ing to fa­cil­i­tate that,” Bas­sant added.

Say­ing he al­ways re­mains ob­jec­tive, Bas­sant said it was not ini­tial­ly his in­ten­tion to write a sto­ry about Clarke’s will­ing­ness to talk with po­lice but he on­ly did so in re­sponse to an­oth­er me­dia out­let’s ar­ti­cle which told a dif­fer­ent sto­ry of the events. He la­belled that sto­ry as mis­lead­ing.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith backed up Bas­sant’s claims yes­ter­day, say­ing Clarke came in con­fi­dence claim­ing that he would on­ly pro­vide him (Grif­fith) with in­for­ma­tion.

“He (Clarke) al­so planned to send CDs and record­ings and in­for­ma­tion of the po­lice of­fi­cers and sol­diers in­volved in the DSS, and that same night, a le­gal of­fi­cer from the De­fence Force met with him and caused him to change his mind,” Grif­fith said.

Grif­fith al­so ac­cused the Trinidad Ex­press of hav­ing an agen­da.