(Trinidad Express) Acting Commissioner of Police Stephen Williams has said the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service is capable of conducting a criminal investigation against former CLICO executives and the related companies to which they were attached.
He recalled in a phone interview on Saturday that it was the Police Service which investigated the Piarco Airport matter which was a complex financial matter no different from the collapse of insurance giant CLICO and related companies.
The investigation is being conducted by a special team of police officers, comprising members of the Anti-Corruption Investigations Bureau (ACIB) and the Fraud Squad.
The criminal investigation was first made public by Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard in a news statement on November 7.
Gaspard had then called on the media to refrain from publishing “anything which might jeopardise, hinder or otherwise prejudice the investigation or any possible proceedings which might result from it”.
The DPP had also expressed similar concern to Sir Anthony Colman, the lone Commissioner at the Enquiry into the collapse of CLICO and related companies and the Hindu Credit Union, that the case which the police were pursuing could be compromised by public revelations in his Commission.
But Colman has declined Gaspard’s implied request for the Enquiry to be held in private saying it was contrary to “public interest.”
The acting Commissioner told the Sunday Express the criminal probe was the responsibility of the Police Service. Williams dismissed questions on whether the local service had the internal capacity for such a probe.
