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Friday, July 4, 2025

Whistleblower now alleges Farley coerced him to lie Chief Secretary denies it, claims political mischief

by

Kay-Marie Fletcher
687 days ago
20230817

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is de­fend­ing him­self in the wake of a new claim by al­leged whistle­blow­er, Ak­il Ab­dul­lah, that claims at­trib­uted to him (Ab­dul­lah) last month against the Prime Min­is­ter and Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice were false.

Fur­ther­more, Ab­dul­lah now al­leges that it was Au­gus­tine who co­erced him to make the false al­le­ga­tions.

Au­gus­tine’s de­nial comes af­ter a new au­dio record­ing be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day with com­ments pur­port­ed to be from Ab­dul­lah, which al­leged Au­gus­tine had forced him to fab­ri­cate false­hoods in­volv­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher and oth­er top-rank­ing PNM of­fi­cials.

Last month, Au­gus­tine claimed he had been told by Ab­dul­lah, dur­ing a meet­ing he (Au­gus­tine record­ed), that Ab­dul­lah was in­volved in an al­leged con­spir­a­cy in­volv­ing Row­ley, PNM of­fi­cials and Hare­wood-Christo­pher, to em­bar­rass and un­der­mine THA of­fi­cials.

Ab­dul­lah al­so al­leged he had met with the PM and spoke to the CoP via phone to dis­cuss the plan, for which he was al­leged­ly of­fered a $270,000 pay­ment to ex­e­cute.

This, Ab­dul­lah al­leged, was linked to his in­volve­ment in an on­go­ing po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a leaked au­dio record­ing in­volv­ing THA of­fi­cials, among them Au­gus­tine, linked to a pro­pa­gan­da scheme us­ing pub­lic funds.

Back then, the PM had de­nied the claims, say­ing he didn’t even know Ab­dul­lah and al­so threat­ened to sue him for the “base­less and false” al­le­ga­tions, but the TTPS launched a probe in­to the claims.

In the lat­est au­dio clip yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the per­son pur­port­ed to be Ab­dul­lah is heard say­ing he was co­erced in­to mak­ing false al­le­ga­tions against the PM and CoP by Au­gus­tine and THA ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers.

In the au­dio, the voice is heard say­ing, “Far­ley called me. I did tell them some stuff but oth­er stuff, they prompt­ed me to say those things. Like the things that were ac­tu­al­ly not true. I nev­er met with the Prime Min­is­ter. They prompt­ed me to say those things. With Er­la and they, that, when I was there, I was sur­prised that they want­ed me to say those things. Yeah, they prompt­ed me to even say those things. How­ev­er, I did tell them that I met with Chad­band and they prompt­ed me to say well look, if you met with him, can you say well you know you got a large sum of mon­ey and they sug­gest­ed, you know, the $270,000 or some­thing and so on and so on and so on.” There were al­so claims of per­son­al threats to com­ply with re­quests.

It added, “Some guys caught me and they box me up in my face. That was one. An­oth­er time, they ran me off the road. Pick me up from out of the drain that I, you know, dashed my­self in­to and told me to com­ply when they ask me to do a cou­ple of things. They out­lined the cou­ple things and I just was re­leased and they went their way. So, they reached out to me and pro­hib­it­ed me from reach­ing out to the po­lice. I was threat­ened twice ver­bal­ly then it was the phys­i­cal thing.

“So, when I went down Trinidad, they did ask me if my life was at threat and I did give the po­lice that in­for­ma­tion. So, they knew that I was threat­ened and they did of­fer to put me in wit­ness pro­tec­tion. And the way how they de­scribed wit­ness pro­tec­tion to me, it was not favourable. They sent some­one to check on my phone. They sent some­one to check on my phone, so when­ev­er the per­son come I had to give them my phone for them to go through to see if I was con­tact­ed ... I know what they’re ca­pa­ble of. They will want to see my phone and I will have to give them be­cause when they start to beat up on me, what will I do? But it was fool­ish of me. You see, I couldn’t un­der­stand why they would want me to say these things. It’s on­ly now I un­der­stand.”

While Guardian Me­dia was not able to ver­i­fy the source of the au­dio, as all calls to Ab­dul­lah went unan­swered yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine, via a me­dia re­lease via his of­fice, claimed that the per­son in the au­dio was Ab­dul­lah.

Au­gus­tine ve­he­ment­ly de­nied any sug­ges­tion that “he, or aides up­on his in­struc­tion, forced or co­erced “whistle­blow­er” Ak­il Ab­dul­lah in­to a con­fes­sion about the bribery and con­spir­a­cy that led to a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Mem­bers of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly”.

Say­ing there is ev­i­dence that it was Ab­dul­lah who ini­ti­at­ed sev­er­al ef­forts to meet with him, which were all ini­tial­ly re­fused, be­fore he fi­nal­ly agreed to do so in Ju­ly, Au­gus­tine said, “The Chief Sec­re­tary con­fi­dent­ly at­tests that there is more than suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to re­fute any claim that Mr Ab­dul­lah was forced to meet with him. This sup­posed au­dio record­ing cur­rent­ly in cir­cu­la­tion, comes sub­se­quent to news­pa­per ar­ti­cles where Mr Ab­dul­lah has said he felt threat­ened af­ter his state­ments to the Chief Sec­re­tary were re­vealed in the House of As­sem­bly. More­over, this back and forth and in­con­sis­ten­cies, forces one to ask the most im­por­tant ques­tion: How is it that the TTPS pred­i­cate their case on this wit­ness?”

Au­gus­tine al­so ex­pressed con­cern that, to date, there has been no probe of the whistle­blow­er’s claims.

“The Chief Sec­re­tary is deeply con­cerned that, to date, no in­de­pen­dent in­quiry in­to Mr Ab­dul­lah’s claims have been made and that there may be sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als seek­ing to tam­per with a po­ten­tial State wit­ness. It must then be sur­mised that this is yet an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal at­tempt to cre­ate mis­chief and dis­trac­tion to the work of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so made sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact PM Row­ley and CoP Christo­pher yes­ter­day but they did not an­swer calls to their phones.

How­ev­er, a mem­ber of the TTPS said a me­dia con­fer­ence ad­dress­ing the mat­ter is ex­pect­ed to take place to­day.


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