ACTING Police Commissioner McDonald Jacob has confirmed there is an active police investigation into the financial dealings of Youth Development and National Service Minister Foster Cummings.
Speaking to Newsday via telephone on Sunday, Jacob said Cummings was under investigation by the police. These investigations are continuing, he added.
The Prime Minister has come out in staunch defence of his minister.
At a post–Cabinet media briefing on May 12, Dr Rowley spoke of a 2019 Special Branch report which was revealed by UNC Senator Jayanti Lutchmedial one week earlier at the party's Monday Night Forum.
Rowley said the report "should be taken with some salt." Asked about the authenticity of the report, Jacob, on Sunday, said he already addressed that issue.
On May 7, Jacob told the media he contacted the Special Branch about the report after it was made public.
"We are looking at the matter, and that is all I can say at this point in time: that we are dealing with the situation," he said then. National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds also spoke of the report, saying, "So far I have reason to believe that it was an authentic document which found itself in the hands of an opposition senator. That is the problem, to me.
"What they don't know is that all of those documents are coded, and information that has come to me demonstrates that document was directed by the police Special Branch to a particular police officer in 2019, and they have proof that it was sent only to one particular police officer.
"So now that it is in the public domain...the question we will ask is, how did that document, which was issued to one particular police officer in 2019, end up in the public domain scandalously and in bacchanal?"
Cummings has denied all of the allegations and has initiated legal action against the UNC senator.
One week after she revealed the Special Branch report, Lutchmedial, also at the UNC's Monday Night Forum, raised questions over a public entity's payment into the credit union account of a high-ranking public official.
She said the payment was disclosed in a source-of-funds declaration form. Lutchmedial said the form was leaked, along with two letters of award from the public body, plus the personal identification of a woman involved in the transaction.
The senator said a cheque from the public body was also uncovered and it was made out directly to the credit union. The letters of the award were made out to a relative of the public official and were provided to support the declaration, Lutchmedial said.
Cummings has since publicly clarified the business transactions and has also filed an emergency application for an injunction to prevent the senator from further disclosing his personal and financial information in public. The judge hearing the matter will give a ruling on June 10.
Cummings has also said the transactions involving companies owned by his family, which were named in the information revealed by Lutchmedial, were above board.
In October 2021, the police applied to the cou
