Panday and wife owned bank account

After numerous adjournments and legal challenges, Panday stood before Chief Magistrate Sherman Mc Nicolls in the Port-of-Spain Eighth Magistrates’ Court to answer the charges.

Panday brought in English Queen’s Counsel Alan Newman to lead his team, while the State retained Sir Timothy Cassel QC.

The case before Mc Nicolls is being tried summarily, so Cassel made his opening address, not to a jury, but to the Chief Magistrate. The following is Cassel’s opening:

“Mr. Basdeo Panday is before the court on three charges of making a false declaration to the Integrity Commission relating to his financial position, for the years 1997, 1998, and 1999. During those three years, he was serving as Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago.

Making such a false declaration is an offence under the Integrity in Public Life Act 1987 which was in force at the time.

This Act established the Integrity Commission. It required every public official including Ministers of Government to file a declaration of income, assets and liabilities and those held by any agent on his behalf.

The Act further made it clear that this declaration includes each bank account and the amount. It is an offence under the Act to file false information. Declarations are made on a pro forma in which details questions are asked about the assets, income, bank accounts, and other financial details as at December 31 of the year in question.

The form is concluded with a declaration that it represents a full return of assets, income and liabilities to the best of the declarant’s ability and is signed by the declarant.

Mr. Panday’s declarations in the years 1997, 1998, and 1999 were false in a material particular. In all those years, he omitted to include a bank account held in the Nat West Bank, 16 Wimbledon Hill Road, London, SW19 in the United Kingdom and the assets contained. That account number was 39036189. This was a bank account he held from 1989. It was a joint account held with his wife and on the relevant days of the three years in question, there was a balance on the account.

At December 31, 1997, there was 11,814 pounds sterling which was roughly $110,000; December 31, 1998, there was 37,033 pounds sterling, approximately $350,000; and December 31, 1999, there was 110,752 pounds sterling, in excess of $1 million.

So it can be seen that over the two years, December 1997 to December 1999, the balance increased by approximately 100,000 pounds sterling, which is equivalent of $1 million. The account statement shows that large sums of money were going in and out at frequent intervals.

On May 21, 2002, the acting Registrar of the Integrity Commission wrote to Mr Panday stating that it had been brought to the attention of the Commission that he was apparently the joint holder of this Nat West account and had failed to declare it in his 1997 declaration. Mr Panday was invited to give an explanation within 14 days.

Mr Panday wrote back on the 29th of May asking for an extension of time, stating that he needed to obtain vital information from abroad. By letter dated the 4th of June, Mr. Panday was granted a further 14 days by the Commission. He then proceeded to give a number of contradictory explanations to the Commission.

EXPLANATION 1

On the 18th of June, he wrote a letter to the Commission enclosing a copy letter sent by his wife to the Nat West Bank in which she was asking for certain information. He informed the Commission that his family had given his wife money they had saved for the education of his children around 1987.

He said that in 1993, his wife had opened the bank account. He said he did not know if his name had been added to the account then, or later. The purpose, he said, was to ensure that if something happened to his wife, he would be able to disburse the funds to the children. He said he never transacted any business on the account, and he did not regard it as part of his assets.

EXPLANATION 2

On the 1st of July, Mr Panday wrote another letter, saying the account was opened in 1989 and his name was added at the time it was opened. He enclosed a letter from the bank addressed to Mrs Panday which stated that the account was opened on the 15th of December 1989 and not in 1993; it was opened as a joint account in the name of Mr and Mrs Panday, and that his name was not added later; that his name was removed as account holder on the 20th of May 2002, long after the relevant years.

It was significant that the 20th of May was the day before the letter from the Registrar asking him for an explanation was written. The timing is significant. He had by this stage gotten wind of the investigation and this was done out of panic.

EXPLANATION 3

On the 15th of July, Mr. Panday wrote to the Commission. He said he went to London fur surgery in 1989, taking with him a cheque to pay for his expenses. He said in order to pay for the expenses of the operation, he and his wife opened an account at the Nat West Bank, Waltham-on Thames with the account number 02664283.

In April 1993, his wife transferred the account to Wimbledon in order to pay for the children’s education. The new account number was what I referred to earlier. These explanations are entirely inconsistent one with the other.

His final version was that this was an account opened in 1989 for his benefit at the Walton-on- Thames branch of the bank. It had nothing to do with family savings or the children. It was opened as a joint account for his benefit.

Notwithstanding all this, he repeated that he did not regard it as part of his assets. The trouble with this last assertion is that a cheque of 500 pounds had been traced which was signed by him as late as the 31st of March 2001.

His claim that he never transacted any business on the account was untrue. Not only was the original account opened for his benefit, but he himself drew a cheque on it as recently as 2001 payable to a doctor.

In the years in question, huge sums of money were coming in and out of the account:

* 119,000 pounds came into the account by of CHAPS transfer from an unknown source on the 28th of November 1997, that was more than $1 million.

* 127,000 pounds was paid out on the 4th of December to an account called Diamond Reserve.

* 20,000 pounds was received from Diamond Reserve on the 2nd of July 1998. A further 150,000 pounds, nearly $1.5 million was paid in on the 5th of November 1998 from Diamond Reserve.

* 115,000 pounds was paid into Diamond Reserve from the account on the 26th of November 1998.

* 120,000 pounds was received into the account from Diamond Reserve on the 24th of December 1998.

* 25,000 pounds was received into the account by CHAPS payment on the 30th of December 1998.

* 145,000 pounds was transferred to Diamond Reserve on the 31st of December, that is $1.5 million.

* 100,000 was received from Diamond Reserve on the 13th of September 1999. A balance of over 110,000 pounds was left on the 31st of December 1999.

These CHAPS transfers and the movement of money between the two accounts were wholly inconsistent with children’s education.

In all three declarations for the relevant years 1997, 1998, and 1999, Mr. Panday stated that he had two savings accounts with the Bank of Commerce and two current accounts with Republic Bank.

His total income was stated to be just over $200,000 per annum including his gross salary as Prime Minister of $180,000. In 1999, there was additional income from the All Trinidad Sugar and General Workers Trade Union of $145,000, making his total income for that year to be $361,000.

No mention was made of this Nat West account in England in the declarations for the three years. No mention was made of the vast sums of money going into the account vastly in excess of his declared income.

All three declarations were signed by Mr. Panday and above his signature, he formally stated that he had given this to the best of his knowledge and belief, a full return of his income from every source. Therein lies the offences, these declarations were untrue.

When investigated, Mr. Panday seemed to have been attempting to shift the responsibility for the running of the account and the movement of these vast sums of money onto his wife.

Now that I have outlined the case, I now call Rosemary Johnson.