Trinidad MP feels vindicated in US bank account allegations made against Prime Minister

(Trinidad Guardian) Vindicated.  That’s how Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Roodal Mooni­lal said he felt yes­ter­day af­ter he claimed sev­er­al “pieces of the puz­zle start­ed com­ing to­geth­er” con­cern­ing the re­cent al­le­ga­tions he’s made against Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“Forty-eight hours af­ter the al­le­ga­tions and with­out one in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­ing launched, I feel vin­di­cat­ed that at least I was on a path—I’m in­spired by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, you re­al­ly do have to ‘fol­low the mon­ey.’”

Mooni­lal spoke to re­porters dur­ing a break in yes­ter­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing in Par­lia­ment. He was com­ment­ing on var­i­ous re­ports about the al­le­ga­tions he made dur­ing Tues­day’s 2019 Bud­get de­bate.

Mooni­lal had pro­duced al­leged email in­for­ma­tion on which he queried what he per­ceived as “links” be­tween Row­ley and al­leged fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions em­a­nat­ing from A&V Drilling to a Mi­a­mi bank. Row­ley, at a me­dia brief­ing on Wednes­day and in Par­lia­ment, rub­bished Mooni­lal’s al­le­ga­tions as un­true and his doc­u­ments as bo­gus. Row­ley said he had no bank­ing trans­ac­tion of the na­ture Mooni­lal al­leged, nor did he have any ac­counts in Mi­a­mi or the Unit­ed States.

Fol­low­ing me­dia re­ports, Mooni­lal yes­ter­day not­ed that one of the peo­ple in his al­le­ga­tions—one Char­lie Di­az—does ex­ist.

He al­so not­ed the Row­ley had—sub­se­quent to his press con­fer­ence—con­firmed be­ing cousin to one J Rawl­in­son Row­ley.

“At his press con­fer­ence, the Prime Min­is­ter didn’t choose to dis­close that,” Mooni­lal added.

On Wednes­day, PM Row­ley had said an email Mooni­lal had made al­le­ga­tions about, and which Row­ley had seen be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed by UNC mem­bers on so­cial me­dia didn’t in­volve him. PM Row­ley said the email ad­dress, “jrow­ley.rawl­in­son@gmail.com” was not his email.

Mooni­lal added: “I’m hap­py that 48 hours lat­er we’ve now con­firmed there is a Char­lie Di­az, there’s a busi­ness con­firmed to be linked for 17 years to AV Drilling and the de­tails I gave in my pre­sen­ta­tion are con­firmed to be true.”

While Di­az re­port­ed­ly de­nied the al­leged cheques, Mooni­lal said he did not think the cheques were meant to be Di­az’s.

“But we now have 25 per cent of the puz­zle—we have 75 per cent more to get. As days go by, the pieces are com­ing to­geth­er and with­out in­ves­ti­ga­tion. They’re just com­ing to­geth­er with so­cial me­dia and me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tions.”

Mooni­lal said in­ves­ti­ga­tions could deal with de­nials on sev­er­al fronts.

“At least from my side, I’m start­ing to feel very light on my feet,” he said.

“I don’t feel elat­ed but I’m feel­ing lighter that my pre­sen­ta­tion wasn’t a com­plete or 100 per cent wrong as the pieces are com­ing to­geth­er—the email ad­dress is cor­rect, the per­son ex­ists, the busi­ness ex­ists, the bank­ing da­ta is ac­cu­rate.”

He added: “It’s just oth­er parts have to come to­geth­er. This sto­ry is un­rav­el­ling by the day. To­mor­row we may well have an­oth­er piece of the puz­zle. I was prob­a­bly on­ly the main pro­tag­o­nist, but now I’m look­ing at so­cial me­dia and re­porters in­ves­ti­gat­ing this fur­ther—I’m hap­py the me­dia’s in­ves­ti­gat­ing with­out di­rec­tion.

“This isn’t about Kei­th Row­ley—it’s about Vidya De­ok­iesingh, AV Drilling and fake oil. I gave some in­for­ma­tion, I can’t get more. But oth­er agen­cies spe­cialise in these things.”

Mooni­lal felt Row­ley’s threat to sue was al­so “linked to fear.” But say­ing he was fear­less, he added, “I’ll be very ea­ger to go to court and lis­ten to Dr Row­ley in the wit­ness box on this mat­ter.”

He said he was the “most scru­ti­nised politi­cian in the re­gion” and Gov­ern­ment had tar­get­ed him, “be­cause I’ve tar­get­ted them—you don’t go in­to a li­on’s den un­less you’re a li­on.”

Mooni­lal felt Gov­ern­ment was shak­en by the mat­ter. He not­ed front­line Min­is­ters from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to the PM did not get to talk in the Bud­get de­bate, which closed short­ly af­ter Mooni­lal’s con­tri­bu­tion Tues­day.

Cit­ing UNC par­lia­men­tary cau­cus con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, he de­clined to say if he had dis­cussed the al­le­ga­tions with UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­fore mak­ing them.