IN January, attorneys for former police commissioner Gary Griffith, and his wife Nicole Dyer-Griffith filed a judicial review claim challenging the lawfulness of the request by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU)’s acting director, Nigel Stoddard, to several financial institutions for information on their accounts.
Stoddard and the Attorney General were named as the defendants. Griffiths’s claim forms part of the exhibit in a constitutional claim filed by firearms dealer Hugh Leong Poi.
In an affidavit, Leong Poi says after reading all the information in Griffiths’ claim, he “became tremendously concerned that the State apparatus, in the form of the Financial Intelligence Unit and members of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service, was being used to harass my company, myself and other members of the firearms industry, such as the Griffiths, for improper motives in the hope that those entities would obtain information to tarnish our good names and reputations.”
The Griffiths are challenging the same sections of the Financial Intelligence Unit Act and seeks similar declarations as Leong Poi’s as well as orders and injunctions to quash the FIU acting director’s requests and from being able to use any of the information he may have already received.
They also contend that Stoddard did not have any suspicious transaction or suspicious activity report from any financial institution on them for him to make such requests.
It also says they are concerned that the request was part of a “continued pattern” of unjustified attempts to use the State’s apparatus to “undermine the character and national reputation of Mr Griffith.”
It also speaks of the withdrawal of the merit list for the appointment of a police commissioner by the Police Service Commission (PSC) and of the announcement by National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds announcement of the audit into the police’s firearms section and the establishment of the six-member team of retired and serving police officers to carry on the audit as well as the report prepared by a retired ACP and chief of defence staff – submitted to the National Security Council – and an investigation by retired judge Stanley John commissioned by the PSC.
Griffith’s claim said he was never contacted by any member of the audit committee nor was he presented with any of their findings or concerns to give him an opportunity to respond.
The claim alleges the Prime Minister, in March 2022, admitted to meeting with then PSC chairman Bliss Seepersad, at President’s House when she was there to submit the merit list. The claim said, at this meeting, certain information about Griffith was provided to the PSC chairman which led to the withdrawal of the merit list. The claim contends, yet again, Griffith was never told what information was supplied by the Prime Minister nor was he allowed to respond.
It also spoke of the launch of Griffith's political party, the National Transformation Alliance and of Dr Rowley’s subsequent statements at a media briefing, in July 2022, relating to the f
