Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has called on Op­po­si­tion MP, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, “to ac­knowl­edge his lies and his dis­gust­ing po­lit­i­cal style” in a scathing so­cial me­dia post.

Row­ley was re­spond­ing yes­ter­day to Mooni­lal’s ac­cu­sa­tion that Keron Rose, who did a sem­i­nar at Bal­isi­er House, had re­ceived $4.8 mil­lion in con­tracts to fix box drains.

Rose him­self re­spond­ed to the claim on Face­book, la­belling it, “the cra­zi­est most asi­nine, reck­less thing I have ever wit­nessed with my own eyes.”

At UNC’s Sun­day me­dia con­fer­ence, Mooni­lal claimed Rose “is the crim­i­nal mas­ter­mind” be­hind Rose Cap­i­tal and Tril­lions Sys­tems, hav­ing done all his re­search and in pos­ses­sion of the Ar­ti­cles of In­cor­po­ra­tion for the com­pa­ny and list of di­rec­tors.

Mooni­lal used Rose’s im­age while mak­ing the ac­cu­sa­tion. Rose went fur­ther on Face­book, “This is whilst pub­licly us­ing my im­age and now im­me­di­ate­ly puts my life in dan­ger ... since busi­ness own­ers are heav­i­ly be­ing ex­tort­ed in Trinidad ... and has brought my rep­u­ta­tion in dis­re­pute, since I’ve re­ceived a num­ber of mes­sages from peo­ple think­ing that I am the con man.”

Lat­er on Sun­day, Mooni­lal would of­fer a clar­i­fi­ca­tion on Face­book, say­ing, “At to­day’s press con­fer­ence I asked sev­er­al ques­tions con­cern­ing se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions of mis­man­age­ment and im­prop­er cor­po­rate prac­tices by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC). A name found on the com­pa­ny doc­u­ments for “Rose Cap­i­tal In­vest­ments LTD” was JAMES ROSE, who is al­so known as JAMES KER­RON ROSE.”

The Oropouche East MP said it was not his in­ten­tion to drag the wrong Rose in­to ques­tion.

“Any re­sem­blance be­tween the ROS­ES by name or ap­pear­ance is re­gret­table and un­in­ten­tion­al as far as the cen­tral is­sues raised are con­cerned,” Mooni­lal wrote.

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter was un­for­giv­ing in his Face­book post say­ing it was the same thing Mooni­lal did to him when he and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar were “build­ing and pro­mot­ing their ‘Fake Oil’ elec­tion cam­paign against me and Naz­im Baksh of AV Drilling.”

That mat­ter is cur­rent­ly be­fore the court.

Row­ley added, “Those are the UNC’s un­der­stand­ing and prac­tice of or­gan­ised wrong­do­ing in the hope of de­lib­er­ate­ly dam­ag­ing peo­ple's rep­u­ta­tion.  They do it con­sis­tent­ly, es­pe­cial­ly Mooni­lal, Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Wade Mark.”

Just last week, the Prime Min­is­ter won a defama­tion law­suit brought against him by the Oropouche East MP.

HDC re­sponds

Yes­ter­day, the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) al­so re­fut­ed Mooni­lal’s claims that its chair­man Noel Gar­cia signed con­tracts and is­sued pay­ments to Rose Cap­i­tal In­vest­ment Ltd in the sum of $4.8 mil­lion, an al­leged in­crease from $3.7 mil­lion. In a state­ment, HDC said, “Rose Cap­i­tal In­vest­ment Ltd is NOT a com­pa­ny with which the HDC con­duct­ed busi­ness.”

The HDC said there is no award let­ter from the HDC to Rose Cap­i­tal In­vest­ment Ltd, Gar­cia does not sign let­ters of Award and/or con­tracts to any HDC con­trac­tor and the cheque is not one is­sued by the HDC.

HDC said a search of its con­trac­tor data­base had not pro­vid­ed the com­pa­ny as hav­ing con­duct­ed any busi­ness with the HDC for the works iden­ti­fied.