Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Months af­ter his son was ar­rest­ed and charged with pro­cess­ing min­er­als with­out a li­cence, To­ba­go busi­ness­man Al­lan Warn­er has been charged with the same of­fence.

Warn­er, 74, vis­it­ed the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion on Tues­day with at­tor­ney Pamela El­der, SC, when the charges were laid. He was grant­ed $100,000 bail with sure­ty and is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear in the Ari­ma Mag­is­trate’s Court on Ju­ly 19.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, El­der con­firmed her client’s ar­rest but de­clined to com­ment fur­ther.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Warn­er com­plained of feel­ing un­well and was tak­en to a health fa­cil­i­ty, where he re­mained un­der po­lice guard be­fore he was grant­ed bail.

Warn­er’s son, Aluko Ato Warn­er, was one of eight peo­ple charged with pro­cess­ing min­er­als at a quar­ry­ing site on Moo­nan Road, Agua San­ta, Waller­field, in May. He was grant­ed $75,000 in bail with a sure­ty.

In the af­ter­math of the younger Warn­er’s ar­rest and charg­ing, a po­lice me­dia re­lease re­port­ed that the ex­er­cise was a re­sult of a di­rec­tive from Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to con­duct an “all-gov­ern­ment, mul­ti-lev­el in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to il­le­gal min­ing and pro­cess­ing of min­er­als.”

Po­lice sources con­firmed that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­gan on De­cem­ber 2, 2023.

An­oth­er of­fi­cer not­ed that po­lice fo­cus con­tin­ued to in­ten­si­fy on the el­der Warn­er as a “per­son of in­ter­est” up to last week.

Guardian Me­dia tried re­peat­ed­ly to con­tact the el­der Warn­er yes­ter­day to ver­i­fy whether he was aware that he was be­ing sought by po­lice last week, but calls and What­sApp mes­sages went unan­swered.

Guardian Me­dia al­so sent What­sApp mes­sages to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley but he did not re­spond.

In No­vem­ber 2023, an in­ves­ti­ga­tion was ini­ti­at­ed by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion re­gard­ing gov­ern­ment con­tracts award­ed to Warn­er’s com­pa­ny that were not above board.

Row­ley, in re­sponse, ac­cused the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion of at­tempt­ing to de­lib­er­ate­ly tar­nish his rep­u­ta­tion.

In Au­gust of that year, con­cerns were al­so raised over his pur­chase of a $1.2 mil­lion town­house in Shir­van, To­ba­go.

In his re­sponse, Row­ley rub­bished claims that he re­ceived any dis­count or favourable treat­ment from the com­pa­ny In­ez In­vest­ment, of which Al­lan Warn­er is a prin­ci­pal, not­ing that he ne­go­ti­at­ed for the price he paid like any oth­er cus­tomer.