An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@

guardian.co.tt

“This should have nev­er hap­pened,” says Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Dr David Lee as he con­demned the Cab­i­net’s de­ci­sion to scrap as­pects of the probe re­lat­ed to Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass.

The Cab­i­net’s de­ci­sion was an­nounced by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs in a press re­lease on Fri­day.

It not­ed that while Ram­dass was pur­su­ing le­gal ac­tion over be­ing sub­ject­ed to the probe, the in­ves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee led by re­tired High Court judge David Har­ris con­tin­ued their work on its terms of ref­er­ence that were not the sub­ject of her case.

It said the team had sub­mit­ted its fi­nal re­port, which it claimed, “help­ful­ly dis­clos­es what went wrong and sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly ex­plains the un­der­state­ment.”

Dr Lee said he has al­ways called for ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al case, which has been drag­ging on too long.

“The oth­er con­cern that I have is the tim­ing; if you look at the tim­ing, they have now ap­peared not to want to pur­sue the mat­ter be­cause the Gov­ern­ment hopes that by do­ing it over the Car­ni­val week­end, it would not get the kind of trac­tion that it de­serves. So, they’re try­ing to sweep it un­der the car­pet, as they say, giv­en the tim­ing of Car­ni­val week­end where every­body will be caught up with the rev­el­ry, and the Cab­i­net is hop­ing that it goes away qui­et­ly,” he men­tioned.

Lee is call­ing for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the whole de­ba­cle with the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and the ac­tions of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert. “I want to ask, why is he not pur­su­ing the mat­ter? When you stood up and said that he was on the right track of pur­su­ing this mat­ter, now he does not want to pur­sue the mat­ter,” Lee lament­ed.

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion MP and Shad­ow Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dave Tan­coo said it did not put an end to the ques­tions that Min­is­ter Im­bert and the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion must an­swer.

Tan­coo said, “These changes vir­tu­al­ly change noth­ing. While it is un­doubt­ed­ly a vin­di­ca­tion of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, the mat­ter con­tin­ues where Ram­dass seeks to of­fi­cial­ly clear her name against the in­jus­tice and mal­ice brought up­on her char­ac­ter and of­fice by the Row­ley-led PNM. All the re­port does is echo the flac­cid ex­cuse that Im­bert pre­sent­ed weeks ago, blam­ing it on an ac­count­ing er­ror to the fault of some un­named pub­lic ser­vant in the Min­istry of Fi­nance.”

The Oropouche West MP al­so stat­ed that it did not ab­solve Im­bert and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of their reck­less be­hav­iour, which has put the tax­pay­ers at un­told ex­pense.

“It re­mains a shame­ful abuse of high of­fice by these Cab­i­net min­is­ters, es­pe­cial­ly the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, who made no ef­fort what­so­ev­er to have the mat­ter re­solved by me­di­at­ing with the Cen­tral Bank be­fore launch­ing an all-out at­tack on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed, in­de­pen­dent Of­fice of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al,” he said.

Gary: This has saved tax­pay­ers mil­lions up­on mil­lions of pounds

Al­so weigh­ing in on the mat­ter was Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance leader Gary Grif­fith, who said this was ex­trav­a­gant news and that the Gov­ern­ment has learned from its mis­takes of the past.

“By the Gov­ern­ment back­ing down and not pur­su­ing the is­sue, this has saved the tax­pay­ers mil­lions up­on mil­lions of pounds in wast­ed time. Then they would have prob­a­bly tried to dis­cred­it the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, up­on which she would have sued the State, and then the State and the tax­pay­ers would have had to pay more mon­ey. Sim­i­lar to what is hap­pen­ing with the state and me.”

The dis­pute be­tween Ram­dass and the Min­istry of Fi­nance arose in April last year af­ter the min­istry sought to de­liv­er amend­ed pub­lic ac­counts ex­plain­ing a re­port­ed $2.6 bil­lion rev­enue un­der­es­ti­ma­tion.

Ram­dass ini­tial­ly re­fused re­ceipt, as she claimed she need­ed le­gal ad­vice on whether she could ac­cept them af­ter the Jan­u­ary statu­to­ry dead­line for sub­mis­sion. Ram­dass even­tu­al­ly ac­cept­ed the records and dis­patched au­dit staff to ver­i­fy them. She then sub­mit­ted her orig­i­nal an­nu­al re­port to Par­lia­ment, which was based on the orig­i­nal records.