Far­ley Au­gus­tine, po­lit­i­cal leader of the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty and Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), has called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to pub­licly ad­dress and clear his name re­gard­ing se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions in­volv­ing his close friend, To­ba­go busi­ness­man Al­lan Warn­er. Warn­er was ar­rest­ed and charged last week for pro­cess­ing min­er­als with­out a li­cence.

Warn­er, 74, was ar­rest­ed at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion with his at­tor­ney and was grant­ed $100,000 in bail.

Then on Sun­day, a me­dia re­port sug­gest­ed that the Dr Row­ley was al­leged­ly in­volved in ex­pe­dit­ing a li­cenced firearm for Warn­er. The re­ports said that Row­ley and for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Stu­art Young con­tact­ed for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith about Warn­er’s ap­pli­ca­tions for a Firearm User’s Li­cence (FUL).

Both Dr Row­ley and Young de­nied fast-track­ing the ap­pli­ca­tions, say­ing they on­ly in­quired about their sta­tus. How­ev­er, Grif­fith sug­gest­ed their com­mu­ni­ca­tions im­plied a re­quest to ex­pe­dite the li­cence. Warn­er al­so de­nied get­ting help for the FUL, which he said he need­ed for per­son­al safe­ty af­ter sur­viv­ing two armed rob­beries.

But Au­gus­tine said he re­mains sus­pi­cious over the mat­ter, es­pe­cial­ly with his per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence with Warn­er Con­struc­tion and San­i­ta­tion Ltd (WC­SL). Speak­ing to the me­dia at the TPP head­quar­ters in Scar­bor­ough yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine said, “Cer­tain­ly he has to clear his name; I can’t do that for him. The prime min­is­ter has a his­to­ry of be­ing very pro­tec­tive of his friends; we saw AV Drilling and how he drilled down on that friend­ship and sup­port­ed that friend­ship notwith­stand­ing. But, in this in­stance, I think the al­le­ga­tions are se­ri­ous.”

Au­gus­tine had al­leged in 2023 that the leak of a tape from a pri­vate meet­ing, which was un­der po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion, was part of an ex­tor­tion plot to get the THA to pay mon­ey to WC­SL.

He said that the com­pa­ny had been paid $25.2 mil­lion by his ad­min­is­tra­tion for a se­ries of projects, some of which had ques­tions about them. Au­gus­tine al­leged that the $100 mil­lion was sent to To­ba­go “be­cause two se­nior mem­bers” of the Gov­ern­ment called “and asked that I find a way to give Warn­er’s $60 mil­lion out of the $100 mil­lion.”

But Keon Warn­er, son of Al­lan Warn­er, ad­mit­ted that WC­SL made a ver­bal re­quest for $60 mil­lion from the chief sec­re­tary for out­stand­ing pay­ments from con­struc­tion projects. Keon al­so ad­mit­ted their com­pa­ny had been fac­ing fi­nan­cial is­sues, and they made the re­quest for the mil­lions owed through Au­gus­tine, who, on his own ac­cord, went to the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for help.

He threat­ened to sue Au­gus­tine over the damn­ing al­le­ga­tions.

Keon had told the Sun­day Guardian that his road projects were done above board and that his com­pa­ny is not in­volved in any cor­rup­tion or black­mail­ing.

Re­spond­ing to the al­le­ga­tion, Keon de­fend­ed his com­pa­ny and his name, stat­ing that “every­thing in To­ba­go, so far, was done above board.”

“I am not go­ing to ease him up at all. Where he claimed that we got paid for work that we nev­er did that is crazy. I have all my pa­per­work … I have all my doc­u­ments. I am go­ing all the way with this,” he said.

Keon said his bank ac­count would re­flect the work he de­liv­ered and what was paid to him, in­sist­ing that Au­gus­tine has been grasp­ing at straws to dis­tract and save him­self from his life­long mis­deeds.

“The voice record­ing has been ex­posed and I’m def­i­nite­ly not the one that record­ed and ex­posed it,” he added.

Keon de­scribed Au­gus­tine’s al­le­ga­tion of a black­mail cam­paign as “crazy talk.”

While Au­gus­tine said he was not re­joic­ing over the or­deal, he hopes in­ves­ti­ga­tors leave no stone un­turned. “I re­al­ly hope, for their sake, that these are just al­le­ga­tions and that they can come away from this. I guess the rest of the coun­try is get­ting to see that I was not be­ing pet­ty; I was not be­ing spite­ful against them.

“When the con­flict arose be­tween my­self and that fam­i­ly and their busi­ness I spoke of the fact that I felt pres­sured to pro­vide favours ... I spoke of that fam­i­ly’s busi­ness in re­la­tion to the THA au­dit and what we found there. I was ac­cused of hat­ing the fam­i­ly.”

Dr Row­ley could not be reached for a re­sponse.