“It’s a grand charge.”
This is how Former Housing minister Dr Roodal Moonilal views reports from Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi that Government has filed legal action against nine former officials of the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) on allegations of corruption.
In an interview yesterday, Moonilal said he did not believe that former HDC officials will be charged.
Asked if anyone of the former officials have yet received court documents, Moonilal said he did not know.
“So far they have made bold statements and announced with fanfare that they are taking civil action against unknown parties to recover monies wrongly spent and persons who may have improperly collected money but 160 hours later, we don’t have a clue as to who are those persons and what is the course of action,” Moonilal said.
Challenging Government to reveal the names of the offenders, Moonilal said, “It is unparalleled in the Commonwealth that a democratic Government will secretly embark on prosecution against unnamed defendants. To this day we don’t know which state sector agencies are involved or which ministers are involved and this is a very bizarre and macabre development in our politics.”
Saying Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley wanted to muzzle him using the court of law, Moonilal said, “They have done an audit at the HDC for one million taxpayers’ dollars and they have arrived at a finding that the HDC spent the money allocated by Parliament. Those audits across the state sector have now added up to $10 million and they have found nothing.”
“I intend to take a broom to the Parliament to give to Al-Rawi so he may continue his witch-hunt.”
Last Thursday, Rowley announced that the AG had filed the first anti-corruption case in the courts through the Office of the Attorney General. Al-Rawi said it had to do with “corruption, mismanagement” and the effort to make people accountable for what they have done.
Saying the matter involved ten months of continuous work, Al-Rawi said the case includes former HDC officials and the alleged misappropriation involves hundreds of millions of dollars.
“The nature of matters surround the core of corruption, unjust enrichment, the breach of certain duties but it is squarely designed to tackle corruption, mismanagement and to ask people to account for what they have done,” Al-Rawi said.
In December last year, HDC chairman Newman George and the corporation’s board decided to send its then managing director Jearlean John and six senior managers on administrative leave to facilitate an audit.
In April, the seven officials’ contracts were terminated by the board but the results of the audit were never made public. John and some of the dismissed managers have sued for wrongful dismissal.
Attempts to contact Al-Rawi for comment proved futile as calls to his cellular phone went unanswered.