Rowley Bank account "a hoax to create confusion": Jeremie

Attorney General John Jeremie told journalists Friday reports that former Cabinet Minister Keith Rowley and his wife had a bank account in the Cayman Islands was "a total fabrication and a hoax calculated to create confusion in the national community."

Jeremie called the report an attempt by the media "to disturb the peace and stability of the nation."

He told local media The Anti-Corruption Investigations Bureau (ACIB) has "fully investigated these reports, and has determined that they were a total fabrication and a hoax, calculated to create confusion in the national community."

Media reports one week ago stated that "The Cayman Islands accounts were opened on July 7, 2007, but it is not certain whether it was fully-funded on the very first day.

"According to reports, Prime Minister Patrick Manning is aware of the investigation being conducted by the police after the information was received following a forensic investigation into the former minister’s affairs," the Trinidad Guardian reported on March 13.

Rowley had dismissed the report "another desperate attempt" at slander.

He told the Trinidad Express last week, "This is just another version of the ’10 million missing, whey de money gone?...Someone fabricates a story, placing my wife’s name on a document, sends it to the media, hoping that the media will publish it. Whoever has done that, it is aimed at me...

"So this is ... part of the concerted effort in certain quarters to change my image and tarnish my character. And that has been going on now for some time now in full public view," he said.

The former cabinet minister told the paper, "I have no foreign bank account. My wife has no foreign bank account...I have no account in Caymans! I never had, and I do not now have!"

Noting that the initial report on television did not name him he said he is not the only "former minister" in the country.

"You all must understand that there are serious things involved in the allegations against some people today, and there is a level of desperation going down in certain quarters.

"There is a level of desperation in certain quarters and this is a tangible manifestation of that extreme desperation existing in certain levels of the society," Rowley said.