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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Empower the PCA now!

by

1756 days ago
20200930

What­ev­er your take on these mod­ern day pyra­mid schemes, oxy­moron­i­cal­ly termed as “Sou-Sou in­vest­ments” and “bless­ing cir­cles” or gam­bling in gen­er­al, these schemes have cer­tain­ly gained tremen­dous pop­u­lar­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go de­spite warn­ings from fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tors about their in­her­ent risk, pre­sum­ably be­cause of its high pay­out rate, no tax­es and large num­ber of win­ners (un­til it crash­es that is) as com­pared to the state spon­sored NL­CB games or its il­le­gal “Chi­nese Whe Whe” coun­ter­part.

Thus it was quite un­sur­pris­ing, the pub­lic’s back­lashed that quick­ly fol­lowed the TTPS raid­ing and seiz­ing some $22Mn in cash ($92Mn if some me­dia re­ports are to be be­lieved) from the La Hor­quet­ta home of the al­leged ad­min­is­tra­tor of the now in­fa­mous Drug Sou-Sou (DSS). More sur­pris­ing, was the re­lease of the in­di­vid­u­als and re­turn of the mon­ey with­in 24hours, rais­ing se­ri­ous con­cerns about the ev­i­den­tial pro­ce­dures of the TTPS, and the le­gal­i­ty of the search and seizure it­self. One can on­ly won­der if and how the TTPS was able to ob­tain a search war­rant for drugs and guns while sus­pect­ing the DSS op­er­a­tion of mon­ey laun­der­ing. Was the ju­di­cial of­fi­cer mis­lead in grant­i­ng such a war­rant, if one was grant­ed? What now be­comes of that whole case?

It seems even Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith shared some of these con­cerns, prompt­ing him to put aside his beef with David West and the PCA and call for their im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the of­fi­cers in­volved. I guess the PCA is on­ly im­por­tant to the CoP when it suits his agen­da, or at least when they don’t have their wa­ter guns trained on his per­son­nel, as can be seen from his com­par­a­tive­ly com­bat­ive re­sponse in the Hack­shaw Mat­ter as well as the al­le­ga­tions sur­round­ing his hand­picked, elite SORT team in the Mor­vant killings or more re­cent­ly in the $22Mn DSS cash seizure, where of­fi­cers al­leged­ly abused their au­thor­i­ty – beat­ing oc­cu­pants and mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing ev­i­dence. Why hasn’t the CoP sim­i­lar­ly called on the PCA to in­ves­ti­gate these mat­ters? Is it that the CoP is in­tent on weed­ing out cor­rupt of­fi­cers, so long as it’s not one of his boys?

Even more wor­ry­ing is that the Hack­shaw mat­ter was in­ves­ti­gat­ed by se­nior mem­bers of his ex­ec­u­tive team, clear­ing Mr Hack­shaw of any wrong­do­ing (crim­i­nal or oth­er­wise), a con­clu­sion that has since been over­turned by the PCA and DPP, thus cast­ing a dark shad­ow on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion it­self and the en­tire ex­ec­u­tive as it leaves the pub­lic to won­der whether the ex­ec­u­tive was com­pro­mised and/or may have at­tempt­ed to cov­er for Mr. Hack­shaw. Who’s guard­ing the guards?

What­ev­er the case, giv­en re­cent de­vel­op­ments and sub­se­quent pro­nounce­ments by the CoP, it’s clear that he has been un­able to clean up the TTPS, with the gen­er­al pub­lic and even the CoP him­self los­ing trust and con­fi­dence in the or­ga­ni­za­tion. A sen­ti­ment sim­i­lar­ly shared by MP Hinds and oth­er mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment giv­en pre­vi­ous state­ments on the is­sue. Per­haps there can be no greater sig­nal that the Gov­ern­ment must act now to keep its be­lat­ed 2015 cam­paign promise and im­me­di­ate­ly move to em­pow­er the PCA with the nec­es­sary fi­nan­cial and leg­isla­tive teeth to ef­fec­tive­ly con­duct its over­sight func­tion, hav­ing the clear man­date to clean up the TTPS and re­store the pub­lic’s faith in it.

An­dre Phillip

via email


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