What was a mil­lion-dol­lar paint­ing do­ing hang­ing in the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Min­istry from the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion?

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said he raised that ques­tion when the Min­istry’s per­ma­nent sec­re­tary had point­ed out to him that the Min­istry had to in­sure a paint­ing for a $1m.

Speak­ing dur­ing Mon­day’s Sen­ate de­bate of the “Ex­plain Your Wealth” bill, Al-Rawi said, “I asked, ‘What are we do­ing with a mil­lion dol­lar paint­ing?’”

He said he sub­se­quent­ly found out it was a paint­ing which was giv­en back to T&T by the US Gov­ern­ment un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act re­lat­ing the Pi­ar­co Air­port cor­rup­tion case - and it was placed in the AG’s of­fice un­der the tenure of for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan.

“That kind of as­set won’t be hang­ing on my wall, it will be put with the Civ­il As­sets Trustee (list­ed in the ‘Ex­plain Your Wealth Bill).”

There, he said, it should be prop­er­ly placed with the repa­tri­a­tion of such items.

On the “Wealth” bill, Al-Rawi said mat­ters by in­ves­ti­gat­ing au­thor­i­ties will not be launched on the ba­sis of sus­pi­cion alone, but via a grad­ual process from en­quir­ing au­thor­i­ties tak­ing mat­ters to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions on­wards to an in­de­pen­dent Civ­il As­sets Trustee and court.

Tax as­pects to be ex­am­ined would on­ly per­tain to mat­ters up to six years ago since peo­ple may not have kept tax in­for­ma­tion longer than that. He al­so said the prop­er­ty could be re­cov­ered if it be­longs to a le­git­i­mate third par­ty.