Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Sad­dam Ho­sein has called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine whether Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­spired to de­fraud the Board of In­land Rev­enue dur­ing the ac­qui­si­tion of a town­house at Shir­van De­vel­op­ment in To­ba­go.

The lat­est re­quest fol­lows the re­cent find­ings from the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion which ac­knowl­edged that the Prime Min­is­ter breached the in­tegri­ty in pub­lic life act when he failed to de­clare the pur­chase of the To­ba­go town­house to the in­de­pen­dent body, but con­clud­ed that he did not know­ing­ly pro­vide false in­for­ma­tion.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Ho­sein raised a new prospect in the mat­ter­— whether the PM paid the cor­rect stamp du­ty to the Board of In­land Rev­enue.

He claimed that mere months af­ter Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Alvin Hi­laire pur­chased a town­house in 2018 for over $1.7 mil­lion, the Prime Min­is­ter paid sub­stan­tial­ly less for a larg­er unit.

“Eight months af­ter Mr Hi­laire pur­chased a small­er unit for 1.715 mil­lion dol­lars, Dr Row­ley came in Feb­ru­ary of 2019 and pur­chased at 1.2 mil­lion dol­lars. How land works, it ap­pre­ci­ates and with hous­ing de­vel­op­ments like these, when more sell the prices go up high­er as de­mand in­creas­es and sup­ply be­comes less. There is a Kath­leen Der­rick who pur­chased in 2019 around the same time like Dr Row­ley in March and she paid 1.8 mil­lion dol­lars.”

He not­ed that in 2021, Dr Row­ley’s daugh­ter al­so paid be­low the mar­ket val­ue of an­oth­er prop­er­ty in the gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty and on both oc­ca­sions the stamp du­ty tax­es paid were low­er than those of oth­er pur­chasers.

“An­oth­er town­house was pur­chased by Sonel Row­ley for 1.2 mil­lion dol­lars three years lat­er af­ter Alvin Hi­laire pur­chased for 1.715 mil­lion dol­lars. An­oth­er Row­ley pur­chas­es at 1.2 mil­lion dol­lars, very sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions, does Dr Row­ley re­al­ly ex­pect us to be­lieve that any hard nose busi­ness­man would sell him two town­hous­es that are val­ued at 1.8 mil­lion dol­lars for 1.2 mil­lion dol­lars and that is sim­ply be­cause he got lucky?” Ho­sein fur­ther queried the dis­crep­an­cies with the stamp du­ty in both trans­ac­tions.

“What was the de­clared mar­ket val­ue when stamp du­ty was paid on these prop­er­ties? Did Dr Row­ley dis­close the true and cor­rect mar­ket price for these two town­hous­es to the BIR when he was pay­ing stamp du­ty? Did he dis­close that eight months be­fore, Alvin Hi­laire had pur­chased a sim­i­lar, small­er unit for $1.715M? The records show that he used a low­er pur­chase price to cal­cu­late and pay his stamp du­ty.”

Ho­sein said sev­er­al red flags re­gard­ing the trans­ac­tions have been raised and must be looked in­to.

“We call up­on the Fraud Squad and the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau to launch an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this mat­ter to de­ter­mine whether Row­ley com­mit­ted a fraud on the Board of In­land Rev­enue by un­der­valu­ing these two lux­u­ry town­hous­es. Was the state de­fraud­ed out of stamp du­ty to which it was law­ful­ly en­ti­tled based on the cor­rect mar­ket val­ue of these town­hous­es?” Ac­cord­ing to law, stamp du­ty must be paid when buy­ing re­al es­tate or a home, ac­quir­ing shares, seek­ing a mort­gage, or con­duct­ing oth­er fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions. The amount of stamp du­ty is usu­al­ly a per­cent­age of the val­ue of the trans­ac­tion a buy­er is un­der­tak­ing.

Ho­sein al­so called on the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to for­ward its find­ings from its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter in­volv­ing the Prime Min­is­ter and his In­ez Gate pur­chase to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

“The Com­mis­sion has no le­gal au­thor­i­ty to de­ter­mine Row­ley’s guilt or in­no­cence. That is a mat­ter for a court of law. It can­not be one rule for the PNM and an­oth­er for the UNC. This is a clear case of dif­fer­ent strokes for dif­fer­ent folks. We, there­fore, call up­on the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to al­low the law to take its course.”