AKASH SAMA­ROO

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Gary Grif­fith, says it is un­true that he told the founder of the Drugs Sou Sou, via a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion, he was do­ing noth­ing wrong.

And one day af­ter that al­le­ga­tion was made, the com­mis­sion­er has de­cid­ed to cut short his va­ca­tion by a cou­ple days; he will re­turn to this coun­try lat­er to­day. 

A re­port in the Ex­press News­pa­per al­leges that Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith told DSS founder Keron Clarke that the po­lice can­not shut him down be­cause he is not com­mit­ting a crime.

How­ev­er speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew this morn­ing, the top cop said that ar­ti­cle is er­ro­neous 

“The same Ex­press will say that in the con­ver­sa­tion, I said ‘you are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed’. If some­one is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed, then I can­not say ‘you are do­ing noth­ing wrong’, so that is a lie,” Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith as­serts in the in­ter­view.

“The fact of the mat­ter is, what I stat­ed is that if per­sons de­cide to put mon­ey in a scheme—and scheme be­ing the op­er­a­tive word—I can­not po­lice stu­pid­i­ty, so that is not a crime. That is what I stat­ed,” he ex­plained.  “How­ev­er, what is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed is the re­ceiv­er. Are you pay­ing the rel­e­vant tax­es? Do you have the rel­e­vant doc­u­men­ta­tion? Are you ad­her­ing to the laws of fi­nanc­ing in this coun­try?”

The Com­mis­sion­er said this isn’t an at­tack on poor peo­ple who seek to ben­e­fit from the Sou Sou. He said this is a mat­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and the ten­ta­cles of the Drugs Sou Sou run deep. 

“A politi­cian had TT$140,000 in an ac­count and there was all hell they want­ed to pay based on the politi­cian, and right­ful­ly so!  And that is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed,” Grif­fith ob­serves.  “But some­one has $22 mil­lion—a Lance Cor­po­ral in the Army, $22 mil­lion in cash—in shelves in the roof and all of that, and peo­ple are say­ing that is not a con­cern, ‘give the man he mon­ey’.”

“No! We have to check,” he as­sert­ed.  “When you have $22 mil­lion, we need to ver­i­fy that is not mon­ey laun­der­ing.”