PORT OF SPAIN: Trinidad & Tobago MP Paula Gopee-Scoon has become the second opposition politician to join speculation about the identity of a government minister whose son is reportedly ‘assisting’ FBI inquiries in the United States.

Gopee-Scoon was speaking during a debate on the Defence (Amendment) Bill 2013. This would give soldiers police powers of arrest during joint patrols by police and soldiers in the fight against crime.

A week ago the local Sunday Guardian reported that the son of a Cabinet minister was being questioned by the FBI and the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in a sealed indictment.

Opposition leader Kevin Rowley said then that the Minister concerned should identity himself or herself to remove a cloud hanging over the entire Cabinet membership.

Gopee-Scoon acknowledged, in the debate, that National Security Minister Jack Warner had expressed concerns about transnational crime “and he should be assuring the population that no Cabinet minister, at all, is implicated in this matter.”

Warner has taken a more central political role in Trinidad & Tobago since giving up all his posts in international and national football in 2011.

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