GOVT CONSPIRACY

Minutes after Attorney General John Jeremie kick-started debate on the Commissions of Inquiry (Validation and Immunity from Proceedings) Bill 2009, Mark urged him to have the evidence adduced thus far in the proceedings referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the Commissioner of Police (CoP).

“I hope the day will come when the Attorney General of this country based on the hard facts before him will give the instruction to the DPP to arrest that man called Calder Hart,” Mark said.

“I want to challenge the Attorney General to take the evidence that has come out so far from the Commission of Inquiry. Take it and send it to your favourite, the DPP. Send it to the DPP, send it to the Commissioner of Police and let them begin an investigation into these criminals who have in fact laundered our monies. You don’t have to wait on the report.”

Mark added, “I am looking forward (to) the day you jail Calder Hart and you give instructions to the police and the DPP like you were giving instructions to the DPP to arrest Lawrence Duprey and Basdeo Panday.”

“It seems to me that when people do wrong in the PNM you give them a handshake and you send them home. But when the UNC does wrong you say jail for them, and jail is not nice. You seem to be one-sided...They allow Mr Calder Hart to do what he wants in this country.”

In an immediate response to the call to move on the evidence adduced in the inquiry thus far, Jeremie said, “I can assure you that the Government is a responsible Government and it is acting responsibly with respect to whatever information is in the public domain.”

Mark’s calls were the culmination of an hour-long contribution in which he accused the Government of a multi-faceted conspiracy to “pull the rug” out from under the inquiry; accused the counsel for the inquiry of “criminal negligence”; laid bare connections between the inquiry staff and Government and questioned the role of Works and Transport Minister Colm Imbert in the proceedings as well as his company, Bolt Engineering Limited.

Noting that the Commissions of Inquiry (Validation and Immunity from Proceedings) Bill 2009 was needed to correct the failure of the State to have the proceedings gazetted and thus legally constituted, Mark queried whether the move was a disingenuous one.

“This is a case of the horse having bolted,” he said. “The Government is now seeking through legislation to lock or close the stable. So the question that the ordinary people are asking on the streets of this country is whether this is all part of a scam or part of a pappyshow on the part of this administration.

“To the ordinary people in this country it appears to be a huge and gigantic conspiracy. It is like a put-up job...the population is concerned that this thing was a cook-up. It is now an established fact that the Government of Trinidad and Tobago never wanted, (and) fought vigorously against the establishment of the Commission of Inquiry into Udecott.”

Mark placed the blame for the gazetting blunder squarely on the shoulders of the inquiry’s lead legal counsel Seenath Jairam SC.

“What was the role of the counsel with responsibility for the commission?” he asked, claiming that the gazetting blunder was unprecedented in this country. Mark contrasted Jairam’s performance as legal counsel with that of noted attorney Reginald Armour SC in a recent inquiry in St Lucia.

“He (Armour) did not make the mistake of this counsel (Jairam). So I ask the question, what was the role of this counsel in this commission? Was he a mole? Was he set-up? Why was he not sufficiently alerted on the issue of the non-gazetting?” Mark said, noting that Jairam had several opportunities to discover the error.

Mark appeared to answer his own questions by pointing out that Jairam is a defence attorney for Imbert. Among the cases in which Jairam is involved, Mark said, is one involving the IFC Grenada Limited, a company whose shares are in the name of Imbert’s wife.

The opposition senator was also scathing of the entire legal team for the inquiry which includes: Kerwin Garcia, Ian Roach, Garvin Simonette and Marvo Harper.

“This was a clear case of criminal negligence. It was a clear case of incompetence and for the ordinary people of this country it was premeditated, calculated, deliberate to sabotage the commission of inquiry,” he said.

In addition to Jairam’s link to Imbert, Mark noted that Garcia is the husband of Tertiary Education Minister Christine Kangaloo. He also noted that commissioner Kenneth Sirju has done work for Udecott and a party to the proceedings, NH International (Caribbean) Limited.

Mark also recalled his claim first made last year that Imbert’s company Bolt Engineering Limited was pre-qualified for and awarded a Udecott contract.

He also alleged that Hart owns property in Turks and Caicos adjoining that owned by an official of Johnson International and called on the Attorney General to investigate Hart’s purchase of a $5 million luxury Florida condominium earlier this year. Mark was also critical of the role played in the proceedings by former commissioner Israel Khan SC. “What role did Mr Israel Khan play in this whole scenario having regard to the information I have about his close relationship with the Government?”

During his contribution Mark asked several questions of Jeremie some of which he allowed the Attorney General to respond to. For instance, Mark alleged that Prime Minister Patrick Manning had contacted Jeremie in London “to find somebody in Keatings chambers in London” in relation to the inquiry.

Jeremie immediately responded, “the Prime Minister did not ask me to find anyone to do anything in connection with the inquiry.”

Mark then issued another query, “did you threaten to resign?” To which, Jeremie did not respond.

Mark made more queries of the Attorney General, but did not give him an opportunity to respond, to Jeremie’s apparent chagrin. At one stage, Mark told Jeremie to “take notes” for his winding-up speech. So heated did the interaction between the two become that after Mark finished his contribution, Jeremie called him “unmannerly”. But that remark triggered the intervention of Senate President Danny Montano who warned Jeremie that such a word was “not language that senators should use.”

Ultimately, Mark issued two demands of Jeremie: table the final report of the inquiry in both houses of Parliament and submit all of the report’s recommendations, including that certain matters be referred to the DPP and CoP. “Don’t fool us, don’t mamaguy us, don’t try to pull wool over the eyes of the population. The Government of this country is aware of all that is taking place in Udecott,” he said, even as he called Udecott a “runaway horse”.

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