(Trinidad Express) Attorney General Anand Ramlogan has said that Works Minister Jack Warner is in the clear on bribery allegations.
Ramlogan said the Police Service would have given the utmost priority to an investigation into an allegation against a serving senior minister. He was speaking at yesterday’s post-Cabinet news conference at the Office of the Prime Minister in St Clair.
“If they found no evidence (of bribery), it is because none exists at the moment,” he said. On the Customs offence of signing a false declaration, Ramlogan said it would be for former FIFA presidential candidate Mohamed bin Hammam to answer this charge, if it is substantiated, but it does not implicate Warner.
Ramlogan was commenting on the apparent contradiction between the Police Commissioner Dwayne Gibbs’s statement that the police had stopped investigations based on advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions and the DPP’s own comments about continuing investigations under the Customs Act.
Ramlogan said it was clear “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that what the DPP was saying, that there was no evidence on the file that was sent to him to substantiate further investigation, except under the Customs law.
“What the CoP has been trying to communicate is this: ‘Look, we can go no further. This is nothing more that we have.'” Ramlogan said because Minister Warner is the subject of intense media scrutiny and speculation, it was not a reason for saying that evidence exists or manufacturing evidence.
The allegations relate to claims of bribery made by Caribbean football officials, following a May 2011 meeting at the Hyatt Regency hotel, to support bin Hammam in his campaign.