标签： Trinidad and Tobago

In a press briefing held Wednesday at the Opposition Leader’s Office in Port of Spain, Pennelope Beckles, leader of Trinidad and Tobago’s main opposition People’s National Movement (PNM), is demanding full transparency into a major breach of court protocol that saw legally sealed legal documents related to a funding investigation into the party leaked to the public before they were even officially served. The breach centers on a court order compelling the PNM to turn over full financial records tied to the reconstruction of the party’s Balisier House headquarters in Port of Spain, which has become the latest flashpoint in a long-running political dispute over the party’s financing.

Beckles laid out the timeline of the controversy to reporters, recalling that the current ruling government first leveled explosive claims against the PNM back in 2025. Shortly after Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar returned from that year’s United Nations General Assembly, she publicly alleged inside Parliament that the PNM’s Balisier House reconstruction fund was fueled by drug trafficking and other illicit activities. Notably, Beckles pointed out, the Prime Minister has never repeated those unsubstantiated claims outside the protected walls of Parliament, where she enjoys parliamentary privilege from defamation claims.

The formal investigation moved forward on July 16, when PNM General Secretary Foster Cummings was served a court order under the 2019 Civil Asset Recovery and Management and Unexplained Wealth Act, requiring the party to disclose all records detailing the sources of funding for the headquarters project. Beckles confirmed that she was scheduled to receive a copy of the order shortly after Cummings, but what has sparked alarm is the fact that the full contents of the order—including all supporting affidavits and particulars—were published and circulated publicly before Cummings was even officially handed the document.

Under the legislation that authorized this court action, Beckles emphasized, all court filings related to these types of unexplained wealth investigations are explicitly required to be kept under seal. Section 58.1 of the act mandates sealed filings for all High Court documents in these matters, and Section 74 enforces strict confidentiality requirements for any official involved in administering the legislation—from agency trustees and property managers to legal advisors and contracted experts. All parties are legally required to treat all case-related documents and information as strictly secret.

The law treats breaches of this confidentiality rule as a serious criminal offense. Anyone who recklessly or intentionally discloses protected information is liable for criminal prosecution, carrying penalties of up to a TT $250,000 fine and five years imprisonment on summary conviction, and up to a TT $500,000 fine and seven years imprisonment for indictment. Compounding the breach, Beckles added, a video of the moment the court order was served to Cummings was also recorded and circulated publicly, a move she called a troubling indicator of the state of governance in the country.

Beckles has formally called on Commissioner of Police Allister Guevarro to launch a full public investigation and answer for how this leak occurred. The PNM leader stressed that the party is not seeking any special exemption from legal process—only that existing laws and procedures be followed correctly. She argued the leak raises serious questions about the integrity of the rule of law under the current administration, and whether the public can still trust the government to uphold due process.

“They are more concerned with the drama than they are concerned with the procedure,” Beckles said of the ruling administration, rejecting what she frames as a politically motivated public relations campaign against the PNM. She added that the party has no intention of litigating the case through the media, and will pursue all legal arguments through the proper court channels. The PNM has already assembled a full legal team to respond to the court order, and Beckles reiterated that the party has nothing to hide regarding the Balisier House project.

Beckles explained that the PNM has owned the land for the headquarters for roughly 65 years, and all funding for the reconstruction has come from a combination of public party fundraisers, car raffles, and voluntary donations from supporters—all of which are a matter of public record. She also urged the public to question the timing of the investigation and the leak, asserting that the high-profile, improper release of the sealed documents was no accidental oversight. “Do not think that the way this matter is going is by accident,” she said.

In a landmark public sector remuneration ruling handed down this week, High Court Judge Frank Seepersad has rejected a judicial review challenge brought by the top two leaders of Trinidad and Tobago’s Police Complaints Authority (PCA), overturning their claims that recommended pay cuts were the product of an unfair and unconstitutional process.

The case centered on challenges by PCA head David West and Deputy Director Michelle Solomon-Baksh to salary recommendations put forward in the Salaries Review Commission (SRC)’s 120th report, which was formally adopted by the national Cabinet in 2024. The proposed salaries for the two roles set out in the report are lower than the current remuneration West and Solomon-Baksh receive. The pair secured court permission to file their judicial review claim last year, arguing the SRC’s process violated core legal standards.

Counsel for the two PCA leaders argued that the failure to consult directly with them on their role-specific remuneration breached the principles of natural justice and dashed their legitimate expectation of consultation, a step the pair noted had been included in past salary review processes. They also contended that the entire procedure used to set the new pay scales was legally irregular.

But Judge Seepersad rejected every plank of the claimants’ argument, concluding the SRC’s review was neither materially unfair nor procedurally flawed. In his ruling, Seepersad explained that requiring individual interviews and consultation for every position covered by the SRC would impose crippling, unfeasible financial and human resource burdens on the independent commission. The SRC’s mandate already covers 325 distinct offices and more than 950 individual office holders across the public service, and extending one-on-one consultation to every role would grind the commission’s work to a halt.

The judge also emphasized that comprehensive salary reviews inherently carry the possibility of downward as well as upward remuneration adjustments. The SRC had publicly committed to a full review of all public sector allowances and benefits, Seepersad noted, and that process cannot be reasonably interpreted to guarantee only pay increases for any role. He confirmed that the SRC’s scoring of West and Solomon-Baksh’s positions was conducted objectively and fairly, per accepted professional evaluation standards.

On the question of legitimate expectation, Seepersad found the SRC acted reasonably in updating its review processes to align with evolving international best practice. He stressed that procedural fairness does not require rigid adherence to outdated working methods, noting that the Constitution mandates progress rather than institutional stagnation. Modern, objective, professionally accepted job evaluation systems are a fully legitimate tool for setting public sector remuneration, he added, and courts have no authority to block lawful procedural improvements that align with global standards.

“Viewed in this context, the methodology adopted by the Commission does not reflect a departure from the requirements of procedural fairness but an affirmation of them,” Seepersad wrote in his ruling.

The judge also underscored the importance of maintaining the constitutional separation of powers between the state’s independent institutions. He noted that the Constitution creates separate bodies with distinct mandates not because any are infallible, but to ensure clear division of responsibility: the judiciary safeguards legality, the SRC evaluates and sets public sector remuneration, and the executive branch governs. Constitutional equilibrium, he argued, depends on each body sticking to its own role and respecting the authority of others.

Concluding his judgment, Seepersad confirmed the SRC had acted fairly, objectively, and fully within its constitutional mandate, leading him to dismiss the challenge in its entirety. West and Solomon-Baksh were represented by a legal team led by Senior Counsel Douglas Mendes and Attorney Anthony Bullock, instructed by Attorney Imran Ali. The SRC was represented by Senior Counsel Jason Mootoo and Attorney Tamara Toolsie, instructed by Attorney Miranda Julien. The Cabinet, which joined the proceedings as an interested party, was represented by Shalini Singh, instructed by Attorney Vincent Jardine.

It was an emotional homecoming for Dominic Hadeed, executive chairman of Blue Waters Products Ltd, on Tuesday, as he stepped through the doors of the company’s Tacarigua headquarters for the first time since being freed from state custody. The 52-year-old business leader was greeted by a workplace prepared to celebrate his return: cheery blue balloons lined sections of the Orange Grove Road compound, and dozens of employees gathered to meet him with warm applause, tight hugs, and firm handshakes.

As Hadeed made his way through the facility, stopping to embrace every member of staff individually, he offered a simple, heartfelt message to the team that had stood by him during his weeks away: “I missed you all.” Many workers were moved to tears during the reunion, with several kissing and hugging their returning employer. Hadeed in turn thanked his team for their unwavering support throughout his detention.

Hadeed’s return comes just days after he and his 42-year-old wife Genevieve were released from almost a month of preventive detention held under national state of emergency rules. The couple were taken into custody on June 24, when police executed search warrants across their properties as part of a probe into an alleged conspiracy to assassinate Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and other high-ranking government officials. To date, no criminal charges have ever been filed against either Dominic or Genevieve Hadeed.

Their detention sparked a drawn-out series of legal battles that worked its way through Trinidad and Tobago’s court system, starting at the High Court, moving to the Court of Appeal, and ultimately reaching the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the country’s highest court of appeal for constitutional and criminal matters.

Last Thursday, Homeland Security Minister Roger Alexander formally revoked the Preventive Detention Orders that had kept the couple in custody. In his announcement, Alexander cited three key factors for the decision: formal recommendations from the independent State of Emergency Review Tribunal, pressing medical considerations related to Hadeed’s health, and an assessment that continued detention while the state’s appeal against an earlier ruling favoring the Hadeeds remained pending was disproportionate.

The case has drawn significant public attention over the use of preventive detention powers granted under the current state of emergency, with legal advocates highlighting the lack of charges brought against the couple after 30 days in custody.

As Trinidad and Tobago paused this week to commemorate the 36th anniversary of the 1990 attempted coup, a fiery exchange has erupted over the current administration’s handling of critical national security infrastructure, with a former top security official accusing the sitting homeland security minister of misappropriating a landmark intelligence facility.

Gary Griffith, who previously led the Ministry of National Security, used a public Facebook post to anchor his criticism in the firsthand lessons he learned during the 1990 uprising. As one of the youngest active-duty soldiers deployed during the crisis, Griffith saw firsthand the systemic failures that allowed the coup attempt to catch state authorities off guard: within the first 48 hours of the insurgency, dozens of law enforcement officials abandoned their posts, leaving frontline personnel to defend critical state infrastructure without support or coordination.

In the aftermath of the failed coup, a government-appointed Commission of Enquiry was convened to unpack what went wrong. The commission ultimately identified deep structural flaws in national security operations and laid out 34 concrete recommendations designed to prevent a similar crisis from unfolding again. Griffith argues that for more than a decade after the commission released its findings, successive governments largely ignored the report entirely—a failure he says is only possible in a state with weak democratic accountability, what he calls a “banana republic.”

During his own tenure leading the national security ministry, Griffith prioritized implementing the commission’s recommendations, carrying out 13 of the 34 proposals before leaving office. The flagship recommendation from the commission was the creation of a dedicated National Operations Centre (NOC), a step directly prompted by the 1990 failure of separate intelligence agencies to share critical threat information with one another.

Griffith explained that this intelligence sharing gap left law enforcement completely unprepared for the 1990 insurgency: with no coordinated predictive intelligence, the state was forced into reactive damage control rather than launching a pre-emptive strike to stop the uprising before it began. Built at a cost of $500 million, the NOC Griffith established was designed as a cutting-edge, high-technology hub that would enable real-time intelligence gathering and cross-agency collaboration. Its core mandate was to bring all branches of the national intelligence community together to aggregate, analyze, and act on threat information, stopping national security risks before they escalated into crisis.

During Griffith’s time in office, the NOC delivered tangible results, he says: in 2014, Trinidad and Tobago recorded the largest single drop in serious crime in 31 years, a reduction achieved without implementing a disruptive national state of emergency.

Today, however, Griffith accuses the current administration and its Homeland Security Minister Roger Alexander of fundamentally altering the NOC’s core mandate, stripping it of its critical intelligence role and reducing it to a basic police dispatch center that duplicates the work already done by the existing E 999 emergency dispatch service. “Sadly, the present administration, through a Minister of Homeland Security whose knowledge is limited primarily to policing, has reduced this highly advanced system to a dispatch centre working alongside E 999, even though E 999 already has its own dispatch centre,” Griffith said. “The National Operations Centre was not built to duplicate E 999.”

Griffith’s final warning is stark: the failure to fully implement all 34 of the 1990 Commission of Enquiry’s recommendations, paired with the gutting of the NOC’s intelligence function, has left Trinidad and Tobago just as vulnerable to a major security crisis as it was three and a half decades ago. “Poor intelligence gathering was the principal weakness in 1990,” he noted. “The failure to implement the remaining recommendations of the Commission of Enquiry, combined with the failure to utilise the National Operations Centre as intended, has left this country exposed. Thirty-six years later, we are not one step closer to ensuring that what happened in 1990 will never happen again.”