Trinidad & Tobago Attorney General Denies Knowledge of Family Connection In Cannabis Business

A great Investigative piece by the Trinidad & Tobago Guardian who have come across a cannabis connection to the country’s Attorney General, Faris Al-Rawi, who’s response so far, is. “My wife has a large fam­i­ly and they are in­volved in var­i­ous busi­ness­es. I knew noth­ing of this.”

We’ll start with a post on Former Minister Devant Maharaj’s facebook page

The comments are expecially revealing.

Even if it is just an apparel company, in our book this still looks somewhat fishy.

Plenty more comments here

 

 

Here’s the full report..

“I knew noth­ing.”

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi yes­ter­day said he was in the dark about months-old com­pa­ny West In­di­an Cannabis Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, a re­tail firm whose di­rec­tor is fam­i­ly to his wife.

So­cial me­dia was busy yes­ter­day shar­ing a high­light­ed copy of the com­pa­ny reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments. Large red cir­cles high­light­ed that one of the di­rec­tors had the same sur­name of Al-Rawi’s wife.

How­ev­er, the own­er of the West In­di­an Cannabis Com­pa­ny Ltd (Wican­na­co), Christo­pher Moses, yes­ter­day de­nied his com­pa­ny had any­thing to do with mar­i­jua­na, de­spite its com­pa­ny name and the brand­ing on its cloth­ing.

Moses is mar­ried to Jen­na Marie Na­hous—who is al­so list­ed as a di­rec­tor—who is re­lat­ed to Mona Na­hous, wife of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Al-Rawi.

In a state­ment post­ed on his Face­book page last night, how­ev­er, Moses al­so­de­nied hav­ing any in­ter­ac­tion with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

“I cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly state that I have no busi­ness deal­ings with Faris Al-Rawi what­so­ev­er. I do not, nor did I dis­cuss my busi­ness with him, as I have NO fi­nan­cial re­la­tion­ship with him. I do not poss­es any in­side in­for­ma­tion per­tain­ing to the cannabis in­dus­try as it comes to the fore in T&T and re­gion wide,” Moses said as he re­spond­ed to al­le­ga­tions that he may have had pri­or knowl­edge of the pend­ing leg­is­la­tion which will de­crim­i­nalise mar­i­jua­na us­age in T&T.

In an in­ter­view, Moses told Guardian Me­dia that Wican­na­co was just a cloth­ing com­pa­ny us­ing mar­i­jua­na sym­bols for brand­ing. He added, how­ev­er, that due to the new­found pop­u­lar­i­ty on so­cial me­dia, he was plan­ning to jump in­to le­gal cannabis re­tail when­ev­er the bill was passed.

But af­ter fur­ther dis­cus­sions with his wife in the wake of the so­cial me­dia furore cre­at­ed over the past hours, Moses told the Guardian they had de­cid­ed to “stay in our lane”.

“We have de­cid­ed to stick to what we know. We had and have no in­ten­tion of get­ting in­to the space be­yond ap­par­el,” Moses said.

The com­pa­ny’s web­site states that it sells mer­chan­dise and cloth­ing with mar­i­jua­na sym­bols.

Al­though Moses said it was on­ly an ap­par­el and mer­chan­dise com­pa­ny, the reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments are broad­er and just lists the com­pa­ny as a re­tail com­pa­ny.

Moses con­firmed that he was on­ly now con­sid­er­ing get­ting in­to the le­gal mar­i­jua­na in­dus­try not on­ly in T&T but al­so up the is­lands.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi said he re­ceived the com­pa­ny reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments from the me­dia yes­ter­day and knew noth­ing of the com­pa­ny or the fact that it was reg­is­tered on­ly months ago in Feb­ru­ary.

Hours af­ter learn­ing of the link, how­ev­er, Al-Rawi said he con­tact­ed his wife’s rel­a­tive and learned the com­pa­ny sold cloth­ing and was al­ready in op­er­a­tion with a func­tion­al web­site and sales.

“I can con­firm that the per­son is a rel­a­tive of my wife,” the AG said.

“But this is the first time I am hear­ing of it and see­ing this,” he said, re­fer­ring to the com­pa­ny reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments.

“My wife has a large fam­i­ly and they are in­volved in var­i­ous busi­ness­es. I knew noth­ing of this.”

The ap­par­el cloth­ing com­pa­ny has as its main share­hold­er GV Hold­ings Lim­it­ed. That com­pa­ny pro­duces 3 Star Sports­wear and Rossi sport­ing ap­par­el.

The com­pa­ny was reg­is­tered back in Feb­ru­ary, sev­er­al months be­fore Al-Rawi him­self an­nounced cannabis con­trol leg­is­la­tion would be brought to Par­lia­ment for le­gal­i­sa­tion de­bate.

The Dan­ger­ous Drugs (Amend­ment) Bill was passed in the Low­er House on Wednes­day and in the Sen­ate Fri­day night.

The Cannabis Con­trol Bill, which is the re­tail and mar­ket­ing as­pect of the le­gal­i­sa­tion, is cur­rent­ly be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment. De­spite the lat­est de­vel­op­ment, Al-Rawi said he would not be re­cus­ing him­self from cannabis de­bates or dis­cus­sions in the fu­ture.

“Why should I?” Al-Rawi said.

“I am not in any way ben­e­fit­ing fi­nan­cial­ly from any busi­ness.”

Rather, Al-Rawi de­scribed him­self as an at­tor­ney and a prop­er­ty de­vel­op­er.

“I have no busi­ness in­ter­ests in any­thing else,” he said.

In fact, he said if he re­cused him­self from every dis­cus­sion in which he had an in­ter­est, he would not be able to par­tic­i­pate in tax amnesty de­bates or the de­mon­eti­sa­tion of the cot­ton-based $100 notes.

“Had I known about it, I would have de­clared it and would press on,” he said.

“I could on­ly de­clare what I know.”

Mean­while, Moses said while he usu­al­ly re­mained silent on so­cial me­dia, he was plan­ning to put out a state­ment and a link to his web­site.

“All my fam­i­ly from T&T (are) in the tex­tile and gar­ment in­dus­try and cloth­ing line,” Moses said.

“Wican­nco is just a cloth­ing com­pa­ny.”

He said that while the com­pa­ny’s de­scrip­tion was broad, the main pur­pose of the site and com­pa­ny was to “cen­tralise press and me­dia through­out the Caribbean.”

“I am not in the mar­i­jua­na in­dus­try, it’s just a brand,” Moses added.

Moses said he was al­so tak­en aback by the at­tacks on so­cial me­dia just be­cause of an “ab­stract con­nec­tion” to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

“I’m po­lit­i­cal­ly ex­posed be­cause my wife is not even blood-re­lat­ed to the AG?” Moses asked.

“That just doesn’t hold wa­ter.”

Mean­while, mar­i­jua­na ac­tivist Naz­ma Muller took to so­cial me­dia to ques­tion why, back in 2015, the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs re­fused to al­low her to reg­is­ter “The Cannabis Foun­da­tion.” She said she was not al­lowed to use the gan­ja leaf sym­bol as the com­pa­ny lo­go for the Caribbean Col­lec­tive for Jus­tice ei­ther.

When Guardian Me­dia post­ed Muller’s ques­tion to Al-Rawi, he said, “I have no role in the reg­is­tra­tion of com­pa­nies.”

He pro­vid­ed two com­pa­ny reg­is­tra­tions, one in 2015 and the oth­er in 2016, adding, “You have seen for your­self that there are sev­er­al com­pa­nies with the name.”

He said the word was grant­ed to com­pa­nies be­fore he be­came At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

“The Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al is the au­thor­i­ty,” he said.

The Cannabis Con­trol Au­thor­i­ty will be the body al­lowed to grant li­cences to the per­sons seek­ing to be­come re­tail providers, as well as those hop­ing to trans­port, ex­port and im­port the herb.

STATE­MENT BY MOSES

My name is Christo­pher Moses; back in Feb­ru­ary of this year, I did in fact reg­is­ter a com­pa­ny, West In­di­an Cannabis Co LTD (WICC)

Please check out our web­site at www.wican­na­co.com

Our busi­ness is in ap­par­el!

Our team be­lieves a glob­al cannabis ap­par­el brand is prime to emerge from the Caribbean re­gion and in prepa­ra­tion of this move­ment we have been in the process of build­ing an ap­par­el brand and a news fo­rum to cen­tral­ize all of the med­ical mar­i­jua­na in­dus­try re­lat­ed news and press through­out the re­gion.

While we are still in the pre-ex­e­cu­tion stage of this ven­ture; in light of to­day’s so­cial me­dia blast our group feels it be im­per­a­tive to state the facts to dis­pel any ru­mors or as­sump­tions made by cer­tain per­sons.

In pur­suit of build­ing an ap­par­el line named WICC (West In­di­an Cannabis Co) I knew I would need a part­ner with the ex­pe­ri­ence and know how re­quired to make this a suc­cess­ful ven­ture.

Eas­i­ly enough, I turned to and aligned my­self with my own fam­i­ly, GV Hold­ings, based in Trinidad, who have been in the tex­tile and gar­ment in­dus­try for over 40 years who have suc­cess­ful­ly cre­at­ed many mass mar­ket brands re­gion­al­ly over the years in­clud­ing house­hold names such as Rossi.

Fur­ther to the above, I cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly state that I have no busi­ness deal­ings with Faris Al-Rawi what­so­ev­er. I do not, nor did I dis­cuss my busi­ness with him as I have NO fi­nan­cial re­la­tion­ship with him. I do not poss­es any in­side in­for­ma­tion per­tain­ing to the cannabis in­dus­try as it comes to the fore in T&T and re­gion wide.

Our busi­ness in ap­par­el cer­tain­ly could not – to any right mind­ed per­son – fea­ture in the de­plorable al­le­ga­tions be­ing made.

The whole world, and cer­tain­ly the Caribbean, which mar­ket we serve in ap­par­el, are way ahead of the cur­rent de­vel­op­ments be­ing dis­cussed in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Any at­tempts to dis­cred­it my name, this ven­ture, or my part­ners in­volved is un­war­rant­ed, mis­lead­ing and can on­ly be de­scribed as scan­dalous, un­truth­ful, and un­doubtably po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed at­tempt to pro­voke a re­ac­tion.

We in­vite any­one who is an ad­vo­cate for the de­crim­i­nal­iza­tion and pro­lif­er­a­tion of med­ical mar­i­jua­na lit­er­a­ture and in­for­ma­tion to join us at the launch of our West In­di­an Cannabis Co. Ltd cloth­ing ap­par­el line, next week Fri­day De­cem­ber 20th: at THC (The Hide­out Cloth­ing Co.) lo­cat­ed on the 3rd floor of Long Cir­cu­lar Mall

Vis­it us and check out the va­ri­ety of WICC ap­par­el; which will al­so make for a great gift over the up­com­ing high hol­i­days.

God bless Trinidad & To­ba­go and more im­por­tant­ly, God bless those who try to de­stroy it with en­vy, hate, and di­vi­sion.

Source: https://www.guardian.co.tt/news/ag-denies-knowledge-of-inlaws-cannabis-business-6.2.1008414.d78dcc7a07