Fingers are pointing at a female public officer from the West coast of Grenada as the person who leaked a government document to the defeated New National Party (NNP) of ex-Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell.
Sports and Culture Minister Ron Redhead confirmed to THE NEW TODAY that the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has been called in to take charge of the investigation as a female Permanent Secretary is also believed to be implicated in the leaked document issue.
The information that was leaked to the NNP surrounded a $5000.00 a month contract awarded to the former Minister of Sports, Patrick Simmons by the new Congress government of Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell.
According to an informed government source, there have been concerns within the Ministry of Youth and Sports over the months that within minutes of certain things being discussed and agreed upon that a particular radio personality linked to NNP was able to bring it out on his talk show programme.
He said that a decision was taken to launch a “sting operation” to find the culprit.
He stated that in the current matter now under investigation only two persons in the Ministry had access to Simmons’s contract document.
He said that one of the suspects is alleged to have taken a snap shot of the contract from a cell phone and relayed it to a Permanent Secretary who then passed it onto a former female government minister within the NNP Cabinet who then made it available to the NNP radio personality.
According to the government insider, armed with this information the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Youth and Sports Alva Brown called in the FIU for assistance in the matter.
He said the suspect who is known to be aligned to the NNP believes that someone had hacked her cellphone to discover her role in the leaked document.
“I hear she throw the phone – she went to (name of telecommunications provider withheld) to find out if her phone was hacked. This girl is in trouble now.”
“They set her up to see who was the person that leaking the information and then they realise is she.”
“She saw the contract …. and she snapped it and she send it to (name of ex-government minister withheld through (name of Permanent Secretary withheld) and (name of former government minister withheld) gave it to (name of NNP radio personality withheld), so (name of NNP radio man withheld) had it on his programme.”
“So when they did the investigation, they say only two or three people would have seen the contract. So they did their investigation and the fingers were pointing at that particular individual.”
According to the government insider, the investigators were able to retrieve information from the Iphone belonging to the suspect to link her to the leaked document.
He said the suspect was reportedly told by the ex-government minister to seek legal advice from a city lawyer who indicated that “there is nothing he could do” at the moment.
A high-level public officer who commented on the issue of the leaked document warned new Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell that if firm and decisive action is not taken against those pro-NNP activists in the public service he runs the risk of becoming another one-term office holder like the 2008-13 Congress government of Tillman Thomas.
He said: “I am picking up some serious leakage and passing on of information to the opposition by an entrenched “Deep State” apparatus led by sycophant (Permanent Secretaries), other senior public officers and a few senior police officers around and within the High Command left to operate with impunity by the new NDC government.”
“This is only the tip of the iceberg, there is much more to come. The government is very porous and (Keith Mitchell) gets a ball by ball coverage of the internal happenings.”
Grenada has become a deeply divided island along political lines in the past 30 years with half of the country supporting Mitchell’s NNP and the other half being associated with Congress.
THE NEW TODAY has also been receiving reports of several resignations from the FIU itself by officers aligned to the NNP taking the decision to resign their positions and not wanting to work with the new Congress administration of Dickon Mitchell.
Just over a month ago, Minister for Carriacou & Petite Martinique affairs Tevin Andrew was chased out of the yard of a female political activist of the NNP on the sister isle when he attempted to visit the household to express sympathy on the passing of a family member.
