T&T AG defends comments about the 1% visas
He said he was very careful in speaking, and that he had said a number of persons and their friends and allies have been trooping into the Office of the AG 'to tell me they have lost their visas' Jeremie said he knew nothing about it and had not spoken with the US. Meanwhile, Fishermen and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) corporate secretary Gary Aboud said yesterday that when the Government talked about the “1%”, it was being racist. Aboud’s United States visa was revoked last November. On Wednesday, Jeremie disclosed that the US government had revoked the visas of certain members of the “1%” in T&T.
Without naming individuals, Jeremie recalled that in 2017 a prominent member of the '1%' described the group as small but the most powerful, in an interview with chef and CNN correspondent Anthony Bourdain. He noted that an apology was later issued and the individual said he was sorry for his careless words and had misrepresented himself and his values. The Attorney General outlined what he described as the group's influence.' But I was subsequently visited in my office by a number of persons who said that their US visas had been revoked. We all know that our American friends have sophisticated means of intelligence gathering,' he said.
'They control and own large segments of our economy. They thrived for a decade under the PNM. They have absolutely no problem accessing any amount of US dollars at any point in time to fund their businesses, their leisure travel, their lifestyles, while the rest of us struggle and line up in banks to get $200 to make foreign trips and only if we show evidence of a ticket to travel,' Jeremie stated. He said members of the group counted their foreign exchange allotments in hundreds of thousands of dollars charged to their credit cards each month on a revolving basis. 'They funded the PNM. They were revered by the PNM. They have taken over the PNM. Those opposites are their ready, happy, and willing pawns,' he said. Jeremie said his curiosity was first piqued by a question from a Guardian Media Ltd journalist, noting that the newspaper was owned by the group. The Attorney General said the influence once enjoyed by the 1% had come to an end.