Gail Alexan­der

The Prime Min­is­ter did not re­port to the Po­lice Ser­vice the May 2022 “do­na­tion” fraud at­tempt by a cul­prit–us­ing the name of the Gates Foun­da­tion—as this scheme was gen­er­at­ed out­side of the ju­ris­dic­tion of T&T us­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al mo­bile phone num­ber and no funds were ex­changed.

Min­is­ter in the Prime Min­is­ter’s Of­fice Stu­art Young in­di­cat­ed this in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, re­ply­ing to queries by UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark on whether the do­na­tion ‘fraud’ at­tempt against the State, us­ing the name of the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion, had been re­port­ed to the po­lice.

Young said, “The Prime Min­is­ter had in­di­cat­ed by way of a press con­fer­ence that on Sat­ur­day May 21, 2022, the chair­man of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) had com­mu­ni­cat­ed to him that the Of­fice of the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Na­tions want­ed to reach the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T and oth­er Cari­com heads to ad­vise them that the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al had re­ceived a sub­stan­tial grant from the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion to be dis­trib­uted to Cari­com mem­ber coun­tries to as­sist them in their on­go­ing pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion pro­grammes.

“On Mon­day May 23, 2022, the Prime Min­is­ter sought to speak to the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al via his mo­bile phone us­ing the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al’s mo­bile phone num­ber which he had used in the past. How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter was on­ly able to com­mu­ni­cate via What­sApp.

“On com­mu­ni­ca­tion via What­sApp, means the Prime Min­is­ter was able to de­ter­mine that the in­di­vid­ual on the oth­er end was not the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al and that it was in fact an at­tempt at what is known as an ‘ad­vance-fee scam’, which in­volves promis­ing an in­di­vid­ual a sig­nif­i­cant sum of mon­ey in re­turn for an up-front pay­ment, which the per­pe­tra­tor claims is re­quired in or­der to ob­tain the funds promised.”

He said, the Prime Min­is­ter did not re­port the mat­ter to the TTPS as this scheme was gen­er­at­ed out­side of the ju­ris­dic­tion of T&T us­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al mo­bile phone num­ber and no funds were ex­changed. “The mat­ter of de­ter­min­ing the iden­ti­ty of the per­pe­tra­tor would have been ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult and there­fore, it was not pur­sued fur­ther,” Young al­so told the Sen­ate.

Young said there was no coun­try or gov­ern­ment in­volved and in the fraud­u­lent at­tempt one couldn’t con­tact a coun­try/gov­ern­ment on the ba­sis of num­bers. He said he wasn’t aware of the “ad­vance” amount sub­mit­ted by the cul­prit .

Young said there has been no oth­er in­stance that oc­curred un­der the cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter so there are no mea­sures be­ing tak­en be­yond the “con­tin­ued vig­i­lance and con­tin­ued sen­si­bil­i­ty of the Prime Min­is­ter.”

On an­oth­er query, whether the Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing leg­isla­tive changes to grant the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion au­thor­i­ty to de­ter­mine its staffing needs and re­cruit the req­ui­site staff—At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour said giv­en the im­por­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al re­la­tion­ship which must be re­spect­ed be­tween the Ex­ec­u­tive and the Com­mis­sion, he had re­ferred this ques­tion to ex­ter­nal Se­nior Coun­sel for ad­vice.

“As at Feb­ru­ary 27, 2023, the ques­tion is still re­ceiv­ing Se­nior Coun­sel’s at­ten­tion and the ad­vice hasn’t yet been re­ceived,” he said.

Ar­mour said the ex­ter­nal SC is for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Rus­sell Mar­tineau.

He said all ques­tions re­ferred to him by the com­mis­sion have been re­ferred to ex­ter­nal SC for ad­vice.