An Incomplete Investigation

Dear Guardian Media Investigative Desk, 

Everything fell flat, after two days of "exciting" coverage about tax dodgers. You guys had me, finally, anxious to be in front of the TV for the CNC3 News. I usually switch between you and TV6 at 7PM, because as a journalist myself, I have to read, listen and analyze almost everything. 

I am sure you can imagine how tiring and depressing that can be, given the stuff that we are reporting on daily, for broadcast news. You know, like international war, gangs and guns and murders here at home and in the Caribbean, extreme weather and geopolitical shenanigans.

 

It requires deep thinking and decision making to write broadcast news for people who are stressed and depressed, near angry or outright violent. And who do not want to listen to news, because it just adds to the bad news in their daily lives.

Anyway, I say this to explain also that the news readers are looking tired, even when they start a newscast. Especially Ria, whose eyes previously lit up with the excitement of news.

Also, by the time I look at your newscasts, I would have worked a news shift myself and would be looking to see what your vast newsroom produced during the day, which I do not have the tentacles to reach. Well, the last few days, as you bright and promising folks know, I have been more than intrigued to watch.

Yup, there were major loopholes in the investigation, especially since many of us already knew the context, which was missing from the story that was leaked to you guys in stages. So we were watching it unfold, chapter by chapter.

Well, we expected a different Chinese (as opposed to Chinese migrants) name on the evening that you delivered Derek Chin to the altar. By that time, you had sacrificed Anthony Chow Lin On (Chinese Laundry). Under threat was another Chinese businessman ( all born and bred Trinbagonians) who has, so far,escaped GML.

When the second local Chinese was delivered up, the Chairman of the Trinidad and Tobago Revenue Authority (which is still being established as an entity) Nigel Edwards revealed that indeed TT$15 billion in taxes was owed by businesses. Fifteen Billion you say!!

Sadly, no one on the investigative desk got a surge of adrenalin, the kind needed to take the story to another level. After all, as the image accompanying this post shows, your report has accounted for 0.6 percent of the money owed “by businessmen.”

Companies that owe billions must be large, it is obvious.

So, while the drama was unfolding, I wondered why the discerning journalists did not see the obvious flaw in the plot.

It would have been different if indeed the one who owes the most money was cracked down first.

There, on the couch, I was wondering, why pick up dollars and cents and leave the one hundred dollar bills?

Did the leak manage to serve the purpose which is to instil fear among the tax dodgers that “we are coming for the billions.”?

Could it be that the Trinidad and Tobago collective gets the first real sigh of relief, because TT$15 billion is five times the worth of TT$3 billion?

This time we are collecting and not losing, or rather misplacing?

Was it a preemptive strike, to release the information, to kill at least two birds

with one stone?

For example, as Finance Minister Colm Imbert, the second most senior member

of Cabinet found himself getting cut eye from colleagues.

After, of course, the egregious, unprecedented failure to verify TT$3 billion in the national accounts.

And the attempt to bully the Auditor General. Cabinet sources say Imbert was de jure acting Prime Minister, but his junior colleague was de facto. And so the hubris levelled at the veteran did not feel good, as it was evident in his face when he hosted the post cabinet news briefing while Dr Rowley was away on business in Ghana.

Colm Imbert

No better time to hit back with his decades of experience albeit in his twilight year.
At the upcoming mid-year budget review in the House of Representatives,
he will now comfortably show the vast difference between 3 and 15, in billions. 

Delinquent taxpayers, only two of whom we know, will be blamed for the state of the economy,
where that “dreadful” Auditor General Report will show that we are up to our throats in debt
and the actual deficit for 2023 is $20 billion.

So, it’s not that Imbert has been conducting business any better than Chow Lin On, or Chin.
The country is broke like them both. He created the enabling environment for the big players
whom they cannot "gangster" or discipline in some cases, to run away with billions, laughing as they go.
How did it reach there? Inevitably, small fry end up in the hot oil.

It is as a result of infighting in the ruling PNM which you can imagine is at a different level with a party in power. 

Given the enviable expenditure on GML’s "investigative desk" maybe you guys are still

working on the story.
It’s a big one. After all you have only uncovered a mere drop in the bucket.
And, yes, you reported some stuff inaccurately, about your competitor, which is also

crossing the line.
So, my dear fellow journalists, writing is all I have, and some knowledge to impart to you.

Until I give it up and spend my hours writing poetry instead of news stories, planting the land,
or selling sweet-drink.
Then, Akash can come and interview this idealistic journalist living in a termite-ridden

old house. I may get help to make a better living.

After decades, as a journalist I still cannot see the fruits of my labour.
The Fourth Estate, clearly, is no longer relevant.

In a world where Netanyahu is the boss, I am a humanitarian. 
Call me suicidal, if you may.

Here Endeth.
Sharmain Baboolal (HBM).
PS Read some more to better understand what respect is about, learn about a previously

well kept secret