Amcham T&T to Govt: Don’t attack groups without proof

PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Re-in­stalled Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Am­cham T&T) pres­i­dent An­na Hen­der­son says white-col­lar crime must be ad­dressed, but sin­gling out one par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty may not be in the coun­try’s in­ter­est.

She made the com­ment yes­ter­day while de­liv­er­ing her speech at the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s an­nu­al meet­ing, in an ap­par­ent re­sponse to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s link­ing mem­bers of T&T’s one per cent to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Je­re­mie made the claim against the “one per cent,” a phrase used to re­fer to the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, dur­ing Wednes­day’s par­lia­men­tary de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE). Per­sad-Bisses­sar then claimed mem­bers of the bank­ing fra­ter­ni­ty were as­sist­ing elite mem­bers of so­ci­ety in fun­nelling for­eign ex­change to for­eign crim­i­nal car­tels on Thurs­day, as she de­fend­ed the AG’s claims.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue di­rect­ly, Hen­der­son said the cham­ber has con­tin­u­ous­ly ad­vo­cat­ed for white-col­lar crime pros­e­cu­tion and con­vic­tions, but did not be­lieve la­belling one group with­out proof was pro­gres­sive.

“If we want busi­ness­es to in­vest con­fi­dent­ly, then pol­i­cy en­vi­ron­ments must be sta­ble, trans­par­ent and ef­fi­cient. We can­not use ad hominem at­tacks on large seg­ments of our so­ci­ety – whether they be based on creed, ge­og­ra­phy or class – if we want every­one to row in the same di­rec­tion to­ward that more pros­per­ous fu­ture for a re­vi­talised T&T,” Hen­der­son dur­ing the an­nu­al meet­ing at the Trinidad Hilton, Port-of-Spain.

She con­tin­ued, “We must en­sure that law en­force­ment knows that the so­ci­ety sup­ports them while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly fos­ter­ing con­fi­dence in all parts of the jus­tice sys­tem. And yes, let me be ab­solute­ly clear, that in­cludes go­ing af­ter white-col­lar crime. A few high-pro­file, suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tions of white-col­lar crim­i­nals will en­gen­der greater trust in the sys­tem. “

AM­CHAM CEO Ni­rad Tewarie echoed a sim­i­lar view to Hen­der­son when asked about the mat­ter fol­low­ing the event.

He said, “Pros­e­cu­tion of white-col­lar crim­i­nals will in­spire con­fi­dence, but I think that at­tacks with­out proof, and cer­tain­ly on groups of peo­ple, any group of peo­ple, would cre­ate dif­fi­cul­ties in en­sur­ing that we are all mov­ing in the same di­rec­tion, be­cause all of us are here and all of us want a bet­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Tewarie added, “I think that our pres­i­dent out­lined it very well. Am­cham T&T is very clear that all crime, in­clud­ing white-col­lar crime, should be pros­e­cut­ed, and where peo­ple are sus­pect­ed guilty of that, then you need to go through the in­ves­tiga­tive and ju­di­cial process, and if they are guilty, then by all means, as she said, we need to (pros­e­cute them).”

Most at­ten­dees ap­proached at the meet­ing yes­ter­day opt­ed not to com­ment on the AG’s state­ments.