Asha Javeed

Con­sul­tant Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

First Cit­i­zen Trustee Ser­vices Lim­it­ed has filed a claim seek­ing to re­cov­er over $15 mil­lion, plus costs, from To­bag­on­ian busi­ness­man Al­lan Warn­er.

In a no­tice pub­lished, the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned bank First Cit­i­zens said it filed the no­tice against Warn­er, the Warn­er-owned In­ez In­vest­ments, Keon Warn­er, Kai Townsend and Kalliana Warn­er.

The no­tice said the sum of $15,061,934.13 was due and ow­ing by In­ez In­vest­ments to the Bank.

To this end, the bank has two guar­an­tees- the sum of $8,297,715.18 has been iden­ti­fied as due and ow­ing by Warn­er and his son, Keon pur­suant to a guar­an­tee dat­ed Ju­ly 31, 2017, and the sum of $6,744,227.91 due and ow­ing by Townsend and Kalliana Warn­er pur­suant to a guar­an­tee dat­ed May 27, 2019, which it is try­ing to col­lect.

In ad­di­tion, the Bank is seek­ing in­ter­est at 8.5 per cent per an­num from Ju­ly 31, 2017, un­til judg­ment, as well as le­gal costs.

Ac­cord­ing to the no­tice, the High Court grant­ed per­mis­sion for the claim to be served by ad­ver­tise­ment and ad­vised that should the de­fen­dants wish to con­test the mat­ter, they must act quick­ly.

The no­tice, which was first pub­lished on March 12, said: “If you in­tend to de­fend this claim, you must en­ter an ap­pear­ance with­in eight days af­ter the last pub­li­ca­tion of this no­tice.”

Warn­er is the founder of the Warn­er Group of Com­pa­nies. His busi­ness­es gained na­tion­al at­ten­tion and were deeply scru­ti­nised dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion be­cause he is a close per­son­al friend of for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

It’s be­cause of this re­la­tion­ship that Warn­er, a To­ba­go-based con­trac­tor, had all his projects and work he’s re­ceived been scru­ti­nised by the then-op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), to de­ter­mine whether Warn­er has ben­e­fit­ed from Row­ley’s po­si­tion as PM.

Warn­er’s re­la­tion­ship with Row­ley was called in­to ques­tion, and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion probed the pur­chase of a $1.2 mil­lion town­house from In­ez In­vest­ments by the then for­mer prime min­is­ter in Shir­van, To­ba­go.

Un­der the tenure of for­mer IC chair­man Ra­jen­dra Ram­lo­gan, the IC in­ves­ti­gat­ed Row­ley three times on dif­fer­ent as­pects of his ac­qui­si­tion of the To­ba­go town­house, and he was cleared all three times.

In the course of their in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the IC had de­ter­mined that Row­ley re­ceived a dis­count which amount­ed to a gift but was not con­nect­ed di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly with the per­for­mance of the du­ties of his of­fice.

In May 2024, Warn­er’s son, Aluko Warn­er, was one of eight men charged with pro­cess­ing min­er­als with­out a li­cense at a 17-hectare site at Moo­nan Road, Waller­fied. One month af­ter the charges, an 18-month quar­ry­ing li­cense was grant­ed for the site by the MEEI.

De­spite that, in ear­ly Ju­ly, Warn­er was charged with pro­cess­ing min­er­als with­out a li­cense at the site.

Warn­er had sur­ren­dered to of­fi­cers at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion in the com­pa­ny of his at­tor­neys, Pamela El­der, SC, and Rus­sell Warn­er and spent two days in cus­tody be­fore be­ing charged by Cpl Ter­rence Now­butt.

He was charged un­der Sec­tion 45(1)(a) of the Min­er­als Act (Cpl 61:03), which states: a per­son who—(a) ex­plores for, or mines, process­es, im­ports or ex­ports, any min­er­al with­out a li­cence is­sued un­der this Act; or (b) mines in an area that is not a min­ing zone, com­mits an of­fence and shall, on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion, be li­able to a fine of two hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars and im­pris­on­ment for a term of two years, and in the case of a sub­se­quent con­vic­tion for such of­fence, shall be li­able to a fine of three hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars and im­pris­on­ment for a term of three years.

He was re­leased on $100,000 bail with sure­ty.

Last year, Warn­er’s com­pa­nies un­suc­cess­ful­ly sought the re­lease of heavy equip­ment and prop­er­ty seized by po­lice as part of their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The mat­ters are cur­rent­ly be­fore the courts.