Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day blast­ed Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Oropouche MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal for in­sin­u­at­ing that the on­go­ing Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­BD) car­tel law­suit was part of a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) racial smear cam­paign against the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ahead of the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

He al­so as­sured In­do-Trin­bag­o­ni­ans that they need not fear his Gov­ern­ment.

The PM made the com­ment in re­sponse to the claims made by Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Mooni­lal on Thurs­day, the day af­ter the EM­BD made fresh al­le­ga­tions in the case against Mooni­lal.

Ad­dress­ing the UNC duo’s claims that the case was al­so a “fab­ri­ca­tion” and a “cock and bull sto­ry,” the PM said, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ought not to have dis­missed the court’s al­le­ga­tions, nor make fur­ther al­le­ga­tions against the PNM that could lead to a racial di­vide.

“I want to say some­thing to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly the East In­di­an pop­u­la­tion, you have noth­ing to fear from the rest of the pop­u­la­tion. The law will de­ter­mine who is po­lice and who is thief,” Row­ley said dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at White­hall, Port-of-Spain.

“This is a par­tic­u­lar­ly of­fen­sive com­ment by Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. We have In­di­an chil­dren here in pri­ma­ry school, in kinder­garten. We have peo­ple of the In­di­an pop­u­la­tion in the pub­lic ser­vice at every lev­el. And, this la­dy and her friends get­ting in trou­ble in the court, rather than putting your de­fence as the court re­quires you to do, is seek­ing now to hide un­der the wings of the East-In­di­an pop­u­la­tion.

“The pop­u­la­tion and the PNM and the gov­ern­ment will have noth­ing to do with it. This has noth­ing to do with your race. It has to do with your per­son­al char­ac­ter be­cause char­ac­ter mat­ters. And no­body who is not list­ed in this mat­ter should take any of­fence of the pro­ceed­ings in the court.”

He added, “Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who to­day is cast­ing that kind of as­per­sion on court pro­ceed­ings here, try­ing to give favour to Dr Mooni­lal, who is the sub­ject of a very se­ri­ous court mat­ter where mil­lions of dol­lars are to be ac­count­ed for in the court and call the PNM’s name. Don’t men­tion the PNM in this! This has noth­ing to do with the PNM. It is not a gov­ern­ment mat­ter, on­ly in so far as a state en­ter­prise is do­ing its du­ty and the gov­ern­ment pro­vides the re­sources.”

Dur­ing the lat­est sit­ting of the case be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad on Wednes­day, the EM­BD added new al­le­ga­tions to its on­go­ing mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar car­tel law­suit against Mooni­lal, a group of con­trac­tors and EM­BD of­fi­cials.

The sub­stan­tive law­suit cen­tres on 12 con­tracts for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of roads and in­fra­struc­ture, which were grant­ed to five con­trac­tors be­fore the Sep­tem­ber 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Con­trac­tors ini­ti­at­ed the pro­ceed­ings against EM­BD for the al­most $200 mil­lion bal­ance owed to them.

How­ev­er, EM­BD counter-sued, claim­ing that those con­trac­tors, as well as oth­ers, con­spired with Dr Mooni­lal and oth­ers to cor­rupt­ly ob­tain the con­tracts.

In its amend­ed civ­il case, the EM­BD is now al­leg­ing that Mooni­lal, who was hous­ing min­is­ter then, served as a “shad­ow di­rec­tor” of the com­pa­ny and for­mer of­fi­cials took in­struc­tions from him. It al­so claimed Mooni­lal breached the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act.

Its main new al­le­ga­tion re­lates to pay­ments al­leged­ly made by the con­trac­tors to third par­ties, who it claimed were con­nect­ed to Mooni­lal and the UNC.

Row­ley brought re­ceipts and cab­i­net notes from 2015—while the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship was in pow­er—as ev­i­dence that even when par­lia­ment was dis­solved, mil­lions of dol­lars were still award­ed in con­tracts, in­clud­ing one to the EM­BD worth $400 mil­lion in Ju­ly 2015. He said this mat­ter could nev­er be a hoax, as pre­vi­ous at­tempts to have the case thrown out of court had failed.

He not­ed that the EM­BD took the mat­ter to court in April 2017 and it could not be about a PNM plan seek­ing to win any elec­tion.

As Row­ley wad­ed in­to Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Mooni­lal, the two were prepar­ing them­selves for screen­ing at the UNC head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas. (See page 6)

How­ev­er, Row­ley said nom­i­nees with crim­i­nal al­le­ga­tions be­ing screened could nev­er hap­pen in the PNM.

“I don’t have that and I am glad I don’t have that and I will tell you be­cause I am in the PNM, I will nev­er have that prob­lem to deal with.”