CARICOM · Trinidad and Tobago
Court Backs Police Probe of PNM’s Balisier House Millions as Party Denounces ‘Political Persecution’
A High Court order clears the way for police to compel Trinidad and Tobago’s opposition to explain how it financed its headquarters. The PNM, now led by Pennelope Beckles, vows to fight what it calls a UNC driven witch hunt.
Trinidad and Tobago’s political temperature has spiked again, this time over bricks, mortar and the question of who paid for them. A High Court judge has granted the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service an order to compel the People’s National Movement to account for the funding behind the multimillion dollar redevelopment of its Balisier House headquarters in Port of Spain. The opposition party has responded with defiance, branding the move a politically motivated assault by the governing United National Congress.
According to reporting in the Trinidad press, Justice Margaret Mohammed granted the order on 10 July. Acting Assistant Commissioner of Police Ramdath Phillip, delegated to lead the investigation by Commissioner Allister Guevarro, then filed an application for a Preliminary Unexplained Wealth Order against the PNM and its trustees under the Civil Asset Recovery and Management and Unexplained Wealth Act of 2019. The commissioner is represented by King’s Counsel Anthony Peto and junior counsel Thomas Cleaver of London’s Blackstone Chambers, with a local instructing attorney.
What is an Unexplained Wealth Order?
It is an investigative tool under Trinidad and Tobago’s 2019 asset recovery law. Where authorities form a reasonable suspicion that a person or entity holds wealth beyond what could have been lawfully acquired, a court can require them to explain the source of that wealth. It is a civil process, not a criminal conviction, and the burden shifts toward the party to account for the assets. Nothing is proven by the filing of such an application.
What the police affidavit alleges
The application is supported by a 21 page affidavit from ACP Phillip. In it, he alleges that the Balisier House complex may have been financed in part through corrupt arrangements involving government contractors who, he claims, received favourable treatment in the award of State contracts during the PNM’s decade in office. These are allegations. None has been tested or proven in court.
Phillip states he formed a reasonable suspicion that the party’s total wealth exceeded its lawfully acquired wealth. He points to a report by the international consultancy Berkeley Research Group, commissioned by the Office of the Attorney General, and says investigators found no evidence that party fundraising alone could have generated enough money to build on the scale identified. The affidavit reportedly cites one contractor, Woodgreen Construction Services, whose bid for the main works allegedly moved from around TT$68 million to about TT$59 million. It also revisits remarks by former prime minister Keith Rowley at the 2024 reopening of the refurbished building, when he acknowledged that small donations could not have covered a project of that magnitude and said the party would not name its financiers.
The PNM answers back
In a statement issued on 11 July under the hand of party chairman Marvin Gonzales, the PNM rejected any suggestion of wrongdoing and struck a combative tone. The party said that, as of the statement, it had received no official correspondence and had not been served with any court order. It described the figures in circulation as grossly exaggerated and insisted that the redevelopment of Balisier House was never undertaken in secret and never financed in secret.
The party said the land and headquarters were acquired more than 65 years ago, and that for over fifteen years it had raised money lawfully through party events, public appeals and voluntary donations from thousands of members and supporters. It framed the police action as the latest stage of a campaign that it says began with a UNC smear effort, escalated through what it called the abuse of parliamentary privilege, and has now reached the courts.
“Truth will prevail over propaganda, justice will prevail over political persecution, and democracy will prevail over tyranny.” People’s National Movement statement, 11 July 2026
The PNM pointed to what it called hypocrisy, noting that it was the party which introduced campaign finance legislation intended to bring transparency to political funding, reforms it says the UNC declined to support. It accused the government of weaponising the machinery and financial resources of the State against its principal opponent, and spoke of fourteen months of what it described as fear, intimidation and State sponsored political victimisation. The party said it had assembled a legal team, would pursue every available remedy, and would keep Trinidad and Tobago, CARICOM and the wider Commonwealth informed.
The backdrop: a landslide and its aftermath
The clash cannot be read apart from the results of April 2025. In that general election the UNC, led by Kamla Persad-Bissessar, swept back to power with 26 of 41 seats, ending a decade of PNM government and reducing the PNM to 13 seats. Persad-Bissessar returned as prime minister, and the defeat triggered a leadership transition that made Pennelope Beckles the first woman to lead the PNM in the party’s near seven decade history. She has spent much of her first year rebuilding a bruised organisation ahead of local government elections due in August.
The Balisier House question is not new. Earlier this year the prime minister used the floor of Parliament to allege that the headquarters had been financed by criminal money linked to the drug trade, claims the PNM angrily rejected and challenged her to prove. What has changed is the venue. The dispute has moved from the political platform to a courtroom, and from rhetoric to a formal legal instrument.
Why this matters beyond Trinidad
For the wider Caribbean, this is more than a Port of Spain quarrel. The use of an unexplained wealth order against a sitting political party is a striking application of a relatively new class of anti-corruption law, and how it unfolds will be watched closely across the region. It sharpens a question familiar in many of our democracies, including here in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, where the line between legitimate accountability and the political use of State institutions is fiercely contested with each change of government.
Two readings now sit side by side. In one, an independent police service is following the money and asking a fair question about how an expensive building was paid for. In the other, the tools of the State are being turned against an opposition weakened at the polls. Which reading holds will not be settled by press releases from either side. It will be settled, if it is contested, in the courts. For now, no finding of wrongdoing has been made, and the PNM is fully entitled to answer the case put to it.
Filed under: CARICOM, Regional Affairs, Politics. Tags: Trinidad and Tobago, PNM, UNC, Balisier House, unexplained wealth order, Pennelope Beckles, Kamla Persad-Bissessar.