Shal­iza Has­sanali

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan has or­dered the ex­tra­di­tion of busi­ness­men Steve Fer­gu­son and Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh to the Unit­ed States to stand tri­al. The de­ci­sion was made yes­ter­day by Ram­lo­gan, who is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and has the statu­to­ry du­ty to de­cide ex­tra­di­tion re­quests. A press re­lease from the AG's of­fice yes­ter­day stat­ed that the al­le­ga­tions against Fer­gu­son and Gal­barans­ingh are "com­plex and se­ri­ous." The AG de­cid­ed that based on these se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions that both men be tried as soon as pos­si­ble, where they will be ei­ther ac­quit­ted or con­vict­ed. "The Chief Mag­is­trate has found that there is ev­i­dence sup­port­ing a pri­ma fa­cie case against them both on the con­duct al­leged in the Amer­i­can re­quest. That de­ci­sion has been up­held by our High Court and Court of Ap­peal and the Privy Coun­cil dis­missed an ap­pli­ca­tion to ap­peal against the Court of Ap­peal's de­ci­sion," the re­lease ex­plained.

Both the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and T&T have car­ried out ex­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the al­leged crim­i­nal con­duct of Fer­gu­son and Gal­barans­ingh. "The al­leged crim­i­nal con­duct has af­fect­ed and may have oc­curred in both the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and Trinidad and To­ba­go," the re­lease fur­ther stat­ed. Ex­ten­sive writ­ten rep­re­sen­ta­tions were sub­mit­ted to the AG at his re­quest, on be­half of the two ac­cused. Fur­ther rep­re­sen­ta­tions were then so­licit­ed from the US gov­ern­ment and the DPP. The last set of rep­re­sen­ta­tions were re­ceived from the DPP on Sep­tem­ber 29, 2010 al­low­ing the AG to ar­rive at a de­ci­sion. The AG, hav­ing care­ful­ly con­sid­ered all the rep­re­sen­ta­tions sub­mit­ted, de­cid­ed that the USA is the more ap­pro­pri­ate and con­ve­nient fo­rum for these charges.

The re­lease added that the AG was con­vinced that Fer­gu­son and Gal­barans­ingh would re­ceive a fair tri­al. Sir El­lis Clarke, one of the ar­chi­tects of T&T's two con­sti­tu­tions and its first pres­i­dent, had said Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son should be tried in T&T. Sir El­lis had al­so strong­ly crit­i­cised the "pros­e­cut­ing au­thor­i­ties" in the mat­ters per­tain­ing to both men.

The charges

Fer­gu­son and Gal­barans­ingh, both for­mer fi­nanciers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, are want­ed in the Unit­ed States South­ern Dis­trict of Flori­da Court to an­swer 95 charges of fraud, in­clud­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing, aris­ing out of the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co Air­port Ter­mi­nal build­ing. Six of the co-de­fen­dants plead­ed guilty in 2006 and were serv­ing prison terms, the high­est be­ing six years. They have al­so agreed to pay more than US$6 mil­lion in resti­tu­tion to the Gov­ern­ment of T&T.