Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

In an at­tempt to ex­plain his pres­ence at the head of­fice of his for­mer min­istry and to clear his name of al­leged mis­con­duct, Fitzger­ald Hinds now claims he was asked to vis­it the build­ing sole­ly to col­lect a cheque.

While De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge told Guardian Me­dia he was in­formed that a po­lice re­port had been filed about the in­ci­dent, Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin said there was no ev­i­dence to sup­port that claim.

Min­is­ter Sturge in­formed a dai­ly news­pa­per that he was pulled out of a Cab­i­net meet­ing on Thurs­day to be told that Hinds vis­it­ed the min­istry’s Tem­ple Court of­fice in Port-of-Spain and al­leged­ly at­tempt­ed to meet with se­nior staff there over sen­si­tive doc­u­ments. Sturge con­firmed with the news­pa­per that Hinds strong­ly de­mand­ed a par­tic­u­lar file which was even­tu­al­ly hand­ed over to him. The re­port stat­ed this trig­gered an in­ter­nal probe by the min­istry and a re­struc­tur­ing of its se­cu­ri­ty process­es. 

How­ev­er, via a Face­book post yes­ter­day, Hinds sought to clar­i­fy the mat­ter. 

Call­ing the news­pa­per ar­ti­cle false and defam­a­to­ry, Hinds ex­plained, “The sim­ple and on­ly facts are that on Thurs­day 29th May 2025, I com­mu­ni­cat­ed via tele­phone, with the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary (PS) (name with­held), of what used to be the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. That con­ver­sa­tion re­vealed that there was a cheque due and ready for me at the of­fice.” 

Hinds added that with the agree­ment of the un­named Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, he pro­ceed­ed to the of­fice to col­lect the cheque. 

“I drove in­to the min­istry’s carpark and wait­ed for a few sec­onds. The PS emerged from the el­e­va­tor in the carpark and hand­ed me the cheque. I thanked her and I im­me­di­ate­ly left. Dur­ing my time there, I made no re­quest of her, nor in­deed of any­one, for any­thing. The PS was the on­ly per­son with whom I in­ter­act­ed,” Hinds wrote. 

He said the re­port was “to­tal­ly false and in­tend­ed to cause hurt, em­bar­rass­ment and to dam­age my rep­u­ta­tion.”

The for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter has since in­di­cat­ed he will pur­sue all le­gal reme­dies against the news­pa­per. 

Guardian Me­dia sought to ask Hinds about the na­ture of the cheque, but he did not re­spond.

We al­so tried to ver­i­fy Hinds’ ac­count of the event with Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary San­dra Fras­er. Al­though Fras­er an­swered her mo­bile phone, the call was dis­con­nect­ed af­ter a few sec­onds, and all sub­se­quent at­tempts to reach her were un­suc­cess­ful.

Act­ing PS Nata­ki At­i­ba-Dilchan al­so could not be reached. 

Com­ment­ing on Hinds’ state­ment, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge would on­ly say, “As a lawyer, he (Hinds) should be aware that some­times si­lence is gold­en.” 

Asked if he spoke with his PS to as­cer­tain if what Hinds said was true, Sturge said, “It is not for me to ask any­one any­thing. There are per­sons tasked with in­ves­ti­gat­ing, I am not one of them.” 

Ear­li­er in the day, Sturge said, “What I am aware of can­not be stat­ed at this time for ob­vi­ous rea­sons. A com­pre­hen­sive re­lease will be done at the ap­pro­pri­ate time.” 

Asked if he would call for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice to get in­volved, Sturge re­spond­ed, “I’m not call­ing for any­thing. The TTPS are aware and will de­cide how they should pro­ceed.” 

Sturge fur­ther stat­ed that he was told a re­port was made to the TTPS. 

How­ev­er, when Guardian Me­dia asked act­ing CoP Ben­jamin if he had in­for­ma­tion to that ef­fect, Ben­jamin said, “I have checked all pos­si­ble sources and can not con­firm that a re­port was made to the TTPS. I would seek to com­mu­ni­cate with the min­is­ter to get fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the mat­ter.” 

When con­tact­ed ear­li­er yes­ter­day, Ben­jamin ini­tial­ly said, “Once a re­port is made we will be do­ing that but I am yet to au­then­ti­cate if any for­mal re­port was made. Be­cause there needs to be a ba­sis on which we do in­ves­ti­ga­tions. So once a re­port is made or once the in­for­ma­tion is passed to the po­lice we are un­der oblig­a­tion to do our im­par­tial in­ves­ti­ga­tion and based on that we will fol­low the nor­mal pro­to­col to en­sure jus­tice and fair­ness in every sit­u­a­tion.” 

On Fri­day, in his ini­tial de­fence of his pres­ence at the min­istry’s of­fice, Hinds re­port­ed­ly told the news­pa­per that car­ried the sto­ry, “I am a cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go and as such, I am en­ti­tled to go to any pub­lic of­fice, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it has to do with le­git­i­mate and per­son­al busi­ness.” 

How­ev­er, Sturge re­spond­ed, “Cit­i­zens usu­al­ly en­ter through the front door and fol­low the usu­al pro­ce­dure. Dri­ving past se­cu­ri­ty in­to the base­ment is not per­mit­ted.” 

Ef­forts to con­tact Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar were un­suc­cess­ful.