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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Farley: It was me on the audio tape

... but says he is being extorted by individual

by

Clayton Clarke
754 days ago
20230617
THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine is surrounded by his THA Secretaries at a virtual briefing yesterday.

THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine is surrounded by his THA Secretaries at a virtual briefing yesterday.

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dence

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is ac­cus­ing one con­trac­tor, who is owed mil­lions of dol­lars by the THA, of seek­ing to black­mail his ex­ec­u­tive in­to pay­ing a $60 mil­lion sum due us­ing the re­cent­ly leaked au­dio clip.

Speak­ing dur­ing a record­ed broad­cast yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine, who ad­mit­ted he was one of the per­sons in the clip, said he was sent the au­dio clip, which fea­tures two voic­es dis­cussing plans to hire per­sons in the THA to pro­mote po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da for the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty, in March of this year, some two months be­fore it be­came pub­lic.

“When I re­ceived this record­ing on March 13, you see how long I re­ceived it and the threat that it will be placed in the pub­lic do­main. I asked a mu­tu­al friend (to) find out from this mad­man what all of this is about.”

Au­gus­tine ex­plained that the in­ten­tion was to force the THA to pay up the monies owed.

“He said ‘well, if you don’t pay up we will em­bar­rass you. If you don’t you will have a hard time, a dif­fi­cult time.’ For­tu­nate­ly, that mu­tu­al ac­quain­tance de­cid­ed to send me the screen­shot. He didn’t just send the mes­sages he sent screen­shots af­ter it was leaked to the pub­lic on May 25,” Au­gus­tine said.

Au­gus­tine con­tend­ed that the con­trac­tor want­ed all the out­stand­ing funds paid.

“Some peo­ple be­lieve that the state purse be­longs to them and so you must not be owed. Oth­ers must wait for eter­ni­ty. Sue the THA for the mon­ey and when you de­cide you want the mon­ey, you must get it or else you will threat­en all sorts of stuff.”

How­ev­er, he said the THA had start­ed to clear the debt owed to con­trac­tors. He said to date, they had paid the con­trac­tor $25.2 mil­lion. How­ev­er, he said “the con­trac­tor, who has re­ceived the largest pay­out, is the one at­tempt­ing to ex­tort more monies from the THA.”

He said the com­pa­ny has tak­en le­gal ac­tion against the THA, adding this was part of the rea­son the THA could not pay out any monies owed.

Au­gus­tine said he had al­so been re­ceiv­ing threats since he re­ceived the au­dio clip, in­clud­ing against his fam­i­ly and mem­bers of his ex­ec­u­tive and sup­port­ers. He said the head of TTPS’ Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit (SIU) had al­so spo­ken to him about plots that could be “detri­men­tal” to his life, while two THA sec­re­taries had al­so re­ceived threats.

He claimed the in­di­vid­ual had al­so threat­ened to re­lease a record­ing which would ex­pose an al­leged sex­u­al re­la­tion­ship he (Au­gus­tine) had with a mu­tu­al ac­quain­tance of theirs.

“Some peo­ple feel be­cause they God­fa­ther pow­er­ful, they could run To­ba­go. But the last time I check, there is one Chief Sec­re­tary in charge of To­ba­go and this ex­ec­u­tive.”

Ad­dress­ing the au­dio clip, Au­gus­tine said it was an old record­ing of a closed-door strat­e­gy ses­sion which they nev­er car­ried through with.

“You dis­cuss all strate­gies, the good, the bad, the ug­ly, the beau­ti­ful, in­dif­fer­ent, every­thing…you look at the pos­si­bil­i­ty, you go home you sleep on it and you come back again…,” he said.

“But I’m glad this is out be­cause it showed that we dis­cussed it, we con­sid­ered it and when you look at the facts, we ain’t hire no team nowhere,” Au­gus­tine said.

He said he be­lieved for­mer deputy chief sec­re­tary Wat­son Duke had leaked the clip, since the lat­ter was one of the per­sons who had at­tempt­ed to in­ter­cede in the pay­ment dis­pute on the con­trac­tor’s be­half.

“In fact, that was per­haps the last meet­ing we had pri­or to his de­par­ture to New York where he (Duke) in­fa­mous­ly ex-com­mu­ni­cat­ed him­self from the THA,” he claimed.

Mor­ris dis­ap­point­ed

at Far­ley’s re­sponse

Mi­nor­i­ty Leader of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Kelvon Mor­ris, was not im­pressed by the long-await­ed re­sponse of Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine to the con­tentious au­dio clip yes­ter­day.

In a press re­lease, Mor­ris said, “He not­ed with ut­most dis­ap­point­ment, the pre-record­ed pub­lic state­ment of a dis­graced Chief Sec­re­tary, that can on­ly be de­scribed as dis­taste­ful, class­less and mas­cu­line jam­me­tery.”

Mor­ris added that Au­gus­tine “spent most of his time de­fam­ing and spew­ing sev­er­al un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed claims against his po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents and de­trac­tors, but he al­so threat­ened THA work­ers, as well as re­veal­ing dis­parag­ing screen­shots about a young fe­male cit­i­zen un­nec­es­sar­i­ly.”

Mor­ris said he “looks for­ward to the out­come of the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions by both the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in­to this mat­ter in­fa­mous­ly dubbed “au­dio­gate’.”

Mean­while, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment To­ba­go Coun­cil leader and for­mer chief sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis said the staged pub­lic brief­ing pro­vid­ed “no op­por­tu­ni­ty to the me­dia or any­body to ask ques­tions.”

How­ev­er, Den­nis said he would not com­ment on the al­le­ga­tions made.

“That is for him, the po­lice and the in­di­vid­u­als he made al­le­ga­tions against,” he said.

How­ev­er, Den­nis said he took note of the ad­mis­sion by Au­gus­tine that “it was him, the Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion and oth­er mem­bers of his team who sat and planned to utilise THA’s pub­lic re­sources, our mon­ey, in a cor­rupt way for their own per­son­al and po­lit­i­cal ben­e­fit.”


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