Com­pro­mise!

Gov­ern­ment’s con­tro­ver­sial “Ex­plain Your Wealth Bill” was passed in Par­lia­ment last night with amend­ments, unan­i­mous­ly sup­port­ed by the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

All 34 MPs in Par­lia­ment last night vot­ed for the bill, which was changed by amend­ments from Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion.

Dur­ing the process, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said as she was vot­ing for the bill, “I say ‘Aye’ for the com­pro­mise, it’s a much-im­proved bill!”

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said af­ter­wards that 99 per cent of the amend­ments made came from Gov­ern­ment.

“We are grate­ful the Op­po­si­tion saw the mer­it in the bill,” Al-Rawi told the T&T Guardian.

Gov­ern­ment MPs grinned broad­ly as they vot­ed for the bill and they laughed loud­ly and desk-thumped sup­port as Op­po­si­tion MPs - such as Per­sad-Bisses­sar, UNC David Lee and MP Rudy In­dars­ingh - vot­ed for the bill.

The bill, of­fi­cial­ly known as the Civ­il As­set Re­cov­ery and Man­age­ment and Un­ex­plained Wealth Bill, 2019, seeks to es­tab­lish a civ­il as­sets agency and part of its man­date will be to probe un­ex­plained wealth. The Op­po­si­tion had ex­pressed con­cerns about its ini­tial form when it was pi­lot­ed last Fri­day. But AG Al-Rawi, in wind­ing up the bill yes­ter­day morn­ing, put the Op­po­si­tion on no­tice that he in­tend­ed to pro­pose amend­ments. The Op­po­si­tion al­so had amend­ments.

Both sides be­gan fi­nal (Com­mit­tee Stage) de­lib­er­a­tions on the bill’s 79 claus­es from 1.30 pm yes­ter­day and con­tin­ued to 7.44 pm, when it was passed.

While the Gov­ern­ment side was ju­bi­lant, UNC MP Gan­ga Singh told the T&T Guardian af­ter­wards that sev­er­al of the Op­po­si­tion’s amend­ments got in, “the Op­po­si­tion Leader led the de­lib­er­a­tions and the AG com­pro­mised.”

Among changes are as­pects pro­vid­ing for Cus­toms, po­lice and Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) of­fi­cials to in­ves­ti­gate mat­ters. Gov­ern­ment agreed to hav­ing the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms rep­re­sent­ing Cus­toms, the BIR chair­man rep­re­sent­ing BIR and the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er or in­spec­tor del­e­gat­ed by him rep­re­sent­ing the po­lice. The bill pro­vides for the three di­vi­sions to take mat­ters to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), with an­oth­er as­pect of the process in­volv­ing in­put from an in­de­pen­dent trustee. Al-Rawi said this in­su­lat­ed the process from po­lit­i­cal reach.

Gov­ern­ment had pro­posed a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage of the bill. This wouldn’t have re­quired Op­po­si­tion votes.

But the Law As­so­ci­a­tion (LATT) in a 35-point cri­tique of the bill yes­ter­day, ex­pressed con­cern about con­sti­tu­tion­al as­pects. The Op­po­si­tion had al­so sup­port­ed a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote. Al-Rawi, how­ev­er, in wind­ing up de­bate yes­ter­day morn­ing, had main­tained the bill on­ly re­quired a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty. Con­clud­ing de­bate, Al-Rawi as­sured the bill wouldn’t af­fect cit­i­zens un­less they were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act (POCA). This, he said, cov­ers a range of of­fences from rack­e­teer­ing, bribery, ter­ror­ism and cor­rup­tion, to hu­man and drug traf­fick­ing, kid­nap­ping, pira­cy and oth­er mat­ters.

“So dou­bles ven­dors, or an oc­cu­pi­er, or peo­ple who bought a prop­er­ty or got it by deed as a gift don’t fall in­to this pot. The bill ap­plies to drug lords, hu­man traf­fick­ers, peo­ple in pub­lic life guilty of mis­be­hav­iour,” Al-Rawi added.

AG: PNM will with­stand scruti­ny

Not­ing UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­cent press re­lease - call­ing on him to ex­plain is­sues with the con­tro­ver­sial St Clair prop­er­ty owned by his fam­i­ly which was rent­ed by Gov­ern­ment - At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said, “We’re ca­pa­ble of with­stand­ing scruti­ny. This law has no ex­cep­tion for Gov­ern­ment and it puts the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in line un­der the POCA.”

Speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Par­lia­ment sit­ting, Al-Rawi said it wasn’t the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Gov­ern­ment which was talk­ing about earn­ing their wealth by sell­ing “nuts” and talk­ing about “pump­kin patch­es” when he claimed con­trac­tors built their hous­es.

“When you have peo­ple in pub­lic life out­side of this Par­lia­ment or deal­ing with peo­ple who held po­lit­i­cal of­fice in the past, (with) sprawl­ing man­sions in pala­tial stand­ing, with pool ta­bles worth $4 mil­lion and ivory and gold-plat­ed, when you’re on a min­is­te­r­i­al salary - I think you’re protest­ing too much,” he added.

“Why should peo­ple in pub­lic life who are guilty of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice be afraid to ex­plain them­selves in a court of law? Peo­ple in this coun­try talk­ing about Mr Big re­peat­ed­ly and al­le­ga­tions about politi­cians, that they’re ei­ther crooks or mooks. And they be­lieve all politi­cians are crooked. (But) here is Gov­ern­ment say­ing, come, in­spect all of us and the on­ly peo­ple in Par­lia­ment who’re say­ing ‘don’t do that’ is the Op­po­si­tion ... is Siparia!”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar lat­er made sev­er­al re­marks as he was sum­maris­ing the bill.

Al-Rawi re­peat­ed, “Thou doth protest too much!”

“Can Siparia (Per­sad- Bisses­sar) be­have her­self?” Al-Rawi asked the House Speak­er.

Al-Rawi said the UNC threw out the same bill in 2014 when they could have pre­sent­ed it.

“They’re fright­ened of the ap­pli­ca­tion of this law...we have no fear in the PNM, of in­spec­tion. We’re the first to be checked - and I know the UNC can’t say that!”

He said the bill would al­low the state to go af­ter those who’d held 19 Venezue­lan girls re­cent­ly. Al-Rawi added that Gov­ern­ment would pro­vide safe­guards on the tax record as­pect of the bill since peo­ple couldn’t be ex­pect­ed to keep records longer than six years.

The House ad­journed to a date to be fixed at the end of last night’s sit­ting.