Distraught deputy director of the Life Sport prgramme, Ruth Marchan, has been provided with a “safe house” by Independent Liberal Party chairman and former minister of National Security Jack Warner. Marchan, who knew Warner during his stint as the Minister of National Security, turned to him after her privately hired bodyguard Curtis “Tallman” Gibson was shot and killed in his bed on Thursday.
She gave Warner her personal laptop for “safe keeping.” All the details of the murder plot against her which she uncovered is on that computer. “I have all her information, it is very safe with me,” Warner confirmed in a telephone interview with the Sunday Guardian yesterday. Warner was “disgusted” that no one had stepped forward to help Marchan, who was forced to turn to him. “She was a total nervous wreck and there was nowhere for her to turn,” Warner said.
Warner had steered clear of the Life Sport debacle, even though it has occupied media headlines for more than a month, but he was unexpectedly brought into the issue when a fearful Marchan turned up at his doorsteps for help on Thursday morning after learning of Gibson’s demise. Marchan, in a subsequent telephone interview, said she was provided with “security measures”—a number for rapid response—by the Ministry of National Security but was taking Warner up on his offer and would be moving to the safe house today.
On Friday, the state-owned Public Transport Services Commission expressed condolences on Gibson’s death, saying that he was a Customer Service Representative II-Facilities Administration for the past 12 years. Marchan yesterday said Sport Minister Anil Roberts was correct when he said in Parliament on Friday that Gibson was not employed with the Life Sport programme.
The Sunday Guardian also learnt that Gibson was not the holder of a licensed firearm, but was in fact in possession of an illegal weapon which he used to guard Marchan. Warner also said that permanent secretary of the Ministry of Sport, Ashwin Creed, was fearful for his life.” “Creed not coming back,” Warner said.
Creed’s prolonged absence from his post was highlighted in the Sunday Guardian on June 8 and one day later, his attorney, former legal affairs minister Peter Taylor, came forward saying his client was on legitimate leave from May 24 to June 30. Request for an extension was dated June 9. Creed’s official leave extension ends tomorrow. “Creed not coming back,” Warner said.
He said while Sport Minister Anil Roberts said Creed had as much as one year’s leave owed to him and was going to take it consecutively for the next few months, there was more to the story. “A permanent secretary is in hiding and you are hearing nothing about it,” he said, adding that the media was “falling down on the job.” Warner said he also listened to Roberts defending the programme but did not believe it.
“Any good that supposedly came out of that programme, and that is debatable, the evil has negated it,” he said. He once again shouldered responsibility for putting the People’s Partnership in Government, saying that he foisted them on the unsuspecting public. “Till the day I step into the grave, I would regret and apologise for that,” he said.
‘Hitmen asked for $12m, 6 houses to spare my life’
Six members of the Rasta City gang in Laventille called for a house and two million dollars each to spare the life of Life Sport deputy director Ruth Marchan. The men had already been paid to carry out the hit when Marchan met and negotiated with the gang members in a bid to save her own life. Marchan, 34, in an interview with the Sunday Guardian, said she made five trips to Snake Valley, Laventille, to negotiate with the men.
“I wasn’t sure to survive those meetings, but I did what I had to do to save my life,” Marchan said. After the series of meetings, she put together a “package” list of their demands and attempted to meet with Housing Minister Dr Roodal Moonilal in order to accommodate them. “I will tell you what they wanted: A house each and two million,” she said. “I uncovered a plot to kill me, dismantled it by talking to the same at-risk youths who were paid to kill me, and would now try to meet their demands,” she said.
Marchan, already at her wit’s end, was thrown into a further tailspin when her bodyguard Curtis “Tallman” Gibson was shot and killed in his bed on Thursday. “He was killed because of his association with me. There is no doubt about that,” she said. Marchan predicted that Gibson’s death would now unleash more gang warfare and more bloodshed. “Now that they kill him, this is going to erupt into something else...this going to start a war on the ground,” she said.
“He was good with the people on the ground and was guiding me from the ground and feeding me information about who was after me and where to go, and not go because I could get killed—he facilitated the meeting with the Rasta City gang members to save my life,” she said. She said that all through her 15 years at the Ministry of Sport, and now with the Life Sport programme, she was always neutral and “good with all sides.”
She said it was one of her “contacts” who directed her to a phone belonging to a senior member at the ministry, which exposed a plot against her. She said she believed that divine intervention led her to her superior’s mobile phone, where she intercepted the text message exchange. “I was guided that the evidence would be on that phone,” she said. Marchan said about a month ago she printed the damning text messages and handed them over to the Minister of Sport Anil Roberts.
“The minister and I have a very good relationship, so I gave him the documents, and he said he would handle it internally; but the people around him knew what I gave him, and if the people around him knew that I gave him that information, then they would know that I knew (of the murder plot),” she said. “That is what made me talk to the media. I used the media as my only weapon to save my life,” she said. “If I did not come to the media, I wouldn’t be talking to you now,” she said.
Marchan said if she was not dead yet, she doubted anyone would take the job to kill her now; but she said she was also prepared to meet her maker. She heaped praise on Independent Liberal Party chairman Jack Warner, Roberts, Sport Ministry permanent secretary Ashwin Creed, and her immediate boss, Cornelius Price, and credited them with keeping her alive. She said whenever Creed left the country, other seniors would “pressure” her to get what they could out of the ministry.
“People feel when you’re an orphan they could take advantage of you. I came straight from the hospital to the orphanage, never knew my parents, and people feel they could take advantage of me, but they cannot,” she said. “Who trying to kill me have to come real good, because I am real good with the guys on the ground, the gang leaders. If someone kill me, it comes from the top,” she said. Marchan said she was “innocently” caught in the middle by the “greed” of those who wanted to control the money within the programme.
“People blaming Carapo, the Muslims, Rasta City, but those fellas caught in the middle too. People using them, paying them, taking advantage of their circumstances to do their dirty work, including paying them to kill me,” she said. “Life Sport is working and has worked, but there is too much interference. There are people high up who are using the at-risk youths to do their dirty work, and that has tainted the programme,” she said.
However, she admitted to also “cutting corners” to help the people within the programme. “I would admit I broke the rules sometimes, but that was never to benefit myself—it was always to benefit the ones on the ground,” she said. “Remember, I know all of them. I grew up in St Dominic’s home, I had no parents, I know all these people. So whenever I cut a corner, it was never for my personal gain, it was for them,” she said.
She said for the first couple of years from its inception, the programme worked well, but now, higher-ups were in a “mad scramble for money.” The Sunday Guardian texted Roberts to try to confirm that Marchan did hand over transcripts of the text messages, but he did not respond.
Huge budget escalation
Life Sport started as Robert’s initiative to reach youths in at-risk communities through sporting programmes. The budget allocation, however, climbed from $6.6 million in the first year to well over $100 million by year three. There have been several public conversations about the contentious programme, which was removed from the Ministry of Sport and placed under the Ministry of National Security. This, Marchan said, had both positive and negative implications.
“It’s 80 per cent positive, 20 per cent negative. I think it was an oversight not to have included the Ministry of National Security in the first place. When you think about who we are dealing with, yes, we should have included National Security. However, these are people who already have criminal records, have matters before the courts, and they are nervous around the police and army. That could mean that they would not participate in the programme now that the security force is going to be involved,” she said.
In a brief telephone interview yesterday, Minister of Housing and Urban Development Dr Roodal Moonilal confirmed that Marchan texted him requesting a meeting last week. “I only meet people in two places: my parliamentary office and my office at the Ministry of Housing...We set up a time, but she could not make it,” he said. “I was not aware of what she was coming to talk with me about,” he said.