Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the So­lo Creed tug­boat and those as­so­ci­at­ed with it were op­er­at­ing il­le­gal­ly and took many steps to hide their iden­ti­ties. Some of the steps in­clude al­leged­ly fal­si­fy­ing rel­e­vant doc­u­ments.

“Let it be known as a fact that the peo­ple who were in­volved set about to hide their iden­ti­ty and act­ed il­le­gal­ly, so it’s not an easy trace (of the own­er/s). But the Gov­ern­ment is on the job and if they are to be found, we’ll find them, the Prime Min­is­ter said in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

The So­lo Creed had been tow­ing the Gulf­stream barge which cap­sized off To­ba­go in Feb­ru­ary, caus­ing a huge oil spill off the is­land’s south­ern coast.

Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion re­gard­ing the ar­rest of the So­lo Creed in An­go­la by T&T of­fi­cials, Row­ley said the re­al own­ers are yet to be iden­ti­fied.

“Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to seek the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the own­er/own­ers of the So­lo Creed. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, to date the true own­er/own­ers of this ves­sel have not been lo­cat­ed. The Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to seek the as­sis­tance of var­i­ous gov­ern­ments and in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies in as­cer­tain­ing this in­for­ma­tion.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly the ves­sel and those as­so­ci­at­ed with it were op­er­at­ing il­le­gal­ly and took many steps to hide their iden­ti­ties, in­clud­ing, it ap­pears, with fal­si­fy­ing rel­e­vant doc­u­ments,” he said.

Row­ley added that the En­er­gy Min­is­ter two weeks ago dis­cussed var­i­ous op­tions with the In­ter­na­tion­al Oil Pol­lu­tion Com­pen­sa­tion (IOPC) Fund in Lon­don for fur­ther as­sis­tance in iden­ti­fy­ing those who are re­spon­si­ble for the oil spill.

He said the IOPC was work­ing “with us to fi­nalise the com­pen­sa­tion.”

“If we’re to make a suc­cess­ful claim with the IOPC, we have to show we’ve tak­en all rea­son­able steps to iden­ti­fy the per­pe­tra­tors of this il­le­gal ac­tion against us. So to say that the ac­tion we’ve tak­en is ‘use­less’ is to not un­der­stand what we’re do­ing at all.”

TTPS vet­ted unit
un­der CoP’s con­trol

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so gave an up­date on the vet­ted unit in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, af­ter the re­cent sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the US Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DEA) to es­tab­lish the unit.

Row­ley said the pro­posed com­po­si­tion of the vet­ted unit will in­clude mem­bers of law en­force­ment en­ti­ties in T&T with the au­thor­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate ma­jor transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime.

“They’ll be sup­port­ed by the US DEA dur­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Ex­ten­sive stake­hold­ers/con­sul­ta­tions were held over the past year from ini­ti­a­tion of this pro­pos­al,” he said.

He added the vet­ted unit will be un­der the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er’s con­trol.

He said he would not ven­ture in­to the com­pen­sa­tion pack­age for of­fi­cers.