“[…] What appears to have escaped the attention of many of our law-abiding citizens is the relationship between many violent crimes and the white-collar variety. “The foot soldiers and their gang leaders do not have the wherewithal to corrupt law-enforcement officials and, indeed, other key state officials and/or to import illegal drugs and illegal firearms. …
Read More »Noble: The Gangster and the Gentleman—an East Port of Spain bandit tale
MENDOZA: I am a brigand. I live by robbing the rich. TANNER: (promptly) I am a gentleman. I live by robbing the poor. Shake hands. George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, 1903. This interplay reveals the nature of men: one is a gangster bent on restoring “social justice,” the other …
Read More »Noble: The best gov’t money can buy—how “tenderpreneurs” hijack the national interest
Mark Twain is credited with the saying: “We have the best government that money can buy.” Locally, we have not been shy about accepting money from unaccountable sources. Our non-existent rules about political campaign rules enable greedy political investors to corrupt our nation and destroy trust. As Chinua Achebe observed …
Read More »Foster’s 12 questions: Why’d Venture flag ‘legitimate repayments’? Was loan declared to IC?
“[…] If, as stated in the Express on Monday 23rd May 2022, you ceased being a businessman upon becoming an MP and a minister in August 2020, why were you personally involved in business, business payments and business loans in January 2021? “[…] If this was a legitimate loan, as …
Read More »Noble: Paria’s plight is rampant in T&T—First World salaries without First World leadership
Stephen R Covey, the American author of First Things First, said: ‘We are free to choose our actions… but we are not free to choose the consequences of these actions.’ As a nation, we need to contemplate this as we mourn the loss of the four men in a recent …
Read More »The CoP and the Commissioner’s Cup: How Fenwick tried to turn a $300k PYC proposal into a $2.8 mil project
Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith peered across the table at roughly half a dozen glum police officers in the Administration Building in Port-of-Spain. They were troubled about something but clearly too nervous to speak plainly. From several accounts, Griffith had no intention of making it any easier for them to …
Read More »Dr Farrell: No Sacred Cows revisited; understanding the PNM’s assault on Central Bank
“[…] The PNM administration seems allergic to institutions which are independent within the executive and run by unelected persons. “It is clearly one of the reasons for the pre-emptive assault on the Office of the Procurement Regulator rendering it a eunuch, so that the hands of elected ministers will not …
Read More »Daly Bread: Grow room of topics; the bad news never ends in T&T
Trinidad and Tobago lives on nervous energy. We are constantly rattled and are set talking, messaging and posting, prompted by extraordinary and usually negative events. At times, things happen so quickly that another event erupts into the headlines before the shock and full implications of an earlier one can be …
Read More »Noble: Sunshine the best disinfectant: why churches must open their books
US Justice Louis Brandeis, in his book Other People’s Money, explained: “Sunshine is said to be the best of disinfectants.” He leveraged the view that ‘public opinion … is full of sunlight … selfishness, injustice, cruelty, tricks and jobs of all sorts shun the light’. This is appropriate to the …
Read More »Noble: Don’t forget how we got in this financial mess; and here’s how to improve our economy
“Thank God for decisions made to stimulate drilling […] by the Kamla Persad- Bissessar government… Instead of benefitting from flowing gas today, we might well have been on our knees, eating grass.” (Dr Bhoe Tewarie, Trinidad Express, 13 March.) An astounding statement with subtexts! What exactly is he saying and …
Read More »The high price of our silence: Nakhid explains why corruption survives in T&T
Former national footballer and would-be FIFA president David Nakhid reflects on the current state of the political ballgame: “Why do you have to speak for these African players?” Patrick Edwards, a career diplomat attached to the Trinidad and Tobago High Commission in London, asked me when he came to Lebanon …
Read More »AG’s suspicious FIU report
Attorney General Anand Ramlogan went to the Senate yesterday with an impressive volume of data on the going-ons at the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). There were 303 suspicious reports filed with the FIU in 2011 from which 65 are still being analysed, 54 were closed and seven were relayed to …
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