The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) is mak­ing it clear that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions of sus­pi­cious fi­nan­cial ac­tiv­i­ty at three banks in­volv­ing ACP Ir­win Hack­shaw is on­go­ing.
Up­on com­ple­tion of the PCA's in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the Au­thor­i­ty shall where deemed nec­es­sary, take ac­tion in ac­cor­dance with the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty Act.
In a re­lease is­sued to­day, the PCA said it not­ed a re­port in the Guardian News­pa­per dat­ed May 28 re­gard­ing the clo­sure of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in­to Hack­shaw fol­low­ing al­leged sus­pi­cious fi­nan­cial ac­tiv­i­ty.
Ref­er­ence is made to a PCA Press Re­lease dat­ed March 9, 2020 where pur­suant to Sec­tion 26 of the PCA Act the PCA 'has in­de­pen­dent­ly ini­ti­at­ed a two-fold in­ves­ti­ga­tion sur­round­ing re­ports of un­usu­al fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions linked to Act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Hack­shaw; and the al­leged dis­sem­i­na­tion of "sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion" by po­lice of­fi­cers at­tached to the Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards Bu­reau.'
The PCA stat­ed that if a crim­i­nal of­fence is es­tab­lished, it would be for­ward­ed to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion and oth­er rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers. It al­so dis­closed that it "may al­so make rec­om­men­da­tions to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice on the con­duct of of­fi­cers in pri­vate work-re­lat­ed busi­ness whilst be­ing em­ployed as a Po­lice Of­fi­cer. They may al­so make rec­om­men­da­tions on how po­lice col­lect do­na­tions from the pub­lic for al­leged po­lice events."
"The PCA con­sid­ers this a very se­ri­ous mat­ter and is work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to com­plete this in­ves­ti­ga­tion as it could po­ten­tial­ly have se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for the se­nior of­fi­cer in­volved," the re­lease said.
Ac­cord­ing to the T&T Guardian ar­ti­cle this week, an in­tense three-month po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Hack­shaw fol­low­ing a news­pa­per re­port which claimed he had al­leged­ly been flagged for sus­pi­cious fi­nan­cial ac­tiv­i­ty at three banks, has been closed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, with the of­fi­cer be­ing ex­on­er­at­ed from any crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing.
The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was con­duct­ed by ACP William Nurse of the Port-of-Spain and West­ern Di­vi­sion and was lat­er sub­mit­ted to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith.
The news­pa­per re­port in March had al­leged Hack­shaw had been flagged for ac­tiv­i­ty dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2014-2019 and the three banks re­port­ed the mat­ter to the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) of Trinidad and To­ba­go.
Hack­shaw has since tak­en le­gal ac­tion against the Trinidad Ex­press, claim­ing from day one he had been treat­ed un­fair­ly.
"In­sid­ers fa­mil­iar with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion said the re­port in­di­cat­ed that Hack­shaw on­ly had three main ac­counts in which do­na­tions to­talling un­der $.25m were giv­en for five po­lice events over the pe­ri­od 2014-2018. The re­port said Hack­shaw, who had al­so earned mon­ey pri­vate­ly from se­cu­ri­ty-re­lat­ed con­sul­tan­cy, had per­mis­sion to con­duct this ac­tiv­i­ty," the ar­ti­cle said.

Re­porter: Rhon­dor Dowlat