Fran­cis Joseph

Two UNC fi­nanciers, Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son, lost their fi­nal bat­tle yes­ter­day to avoid ex­tra­di­tion to Mi­a­mi, where they face a to­tal of 95 charges re­lat­ing to the con­struc­tion of the $1.6 bil­lion Pi­ar­co Air­port Ter­mi­nal build­ing. The Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil in Lon­don re­fused to grant leave to the two busi­ness­men to ap­peal the mat­ter to the British Law Lords.

At­tor­neys for both men, Ge­of­frey Robert­son, QC and Ed­ward Fitzger­ald, QC, as well as James Lewis, QC, for the State, had filed writ­ten sub­mis­sions with the Privy Coun­cil last month af­ter the lo­cal Court of Ap­peal dis­missed the ap­peal brought by the two men chal­leng­ing their ex­tra­di­tion. The Law Lords–Browne, Mance and Collins– in­di­cat­ed that they would study the writ­ten sub­mis­sions, and if need be, they would sum­mon the par­ties to hear oral ar­gu­ments. But the Privy Coun­cil nev­er sum­moned the lawyers for oral ar­gu­ments.

Yes­ter­day, the Law Lords in­di­cat­ed that leave was re­fused and that the or­der of the court would be en­tered short­ly. The Privy Coun­cil Reg­is­trar's of­fice has con­firmed the de­ci­sion of the Law Lords. That means that the four-year bat­tle by Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son has come to an end. All that is left now is for the new At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Anand Ram­lo­gan, to sign the war­rant of sur­ren­der, for both men to be tak­en by US mar­shals to Mi­a­mi to be ar­raigned be­fore Flori­da judge, Paul Huck.

Up to last night, Ram­lo­gan had not yet signed the war­rant as the US mar­shals of­fice in Flori­da said it had re­ceived no re­quest to come to Trinidad. Both Fer­gu­son and Gal­barans­ingh had been on $1 mil­lion bail since their ar­rest in 2006. In an un­prece­dent­ed move, Chief Mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc Nicolls grant­ed bail in an ex­tra­di­tion case, when in all oth­er sim­i­lar cas­es, the want­ed peo­ple were all kept in prison. On May 3, the lo­cal Court of Ap­peal, by a 2-1 ma­jor­i­ty, ruled that Fer­gu­son and Gal­barans­ingh be ex­tra­dit­ed.

Jus­tices Humphrey Stollmey­er and Gre­go­ry Smith, a in 59-page judg­ment, ruled against Fer­gu­son and Gal­barans­ingh, while Jus­tice Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine dis­sent­ed in a 62-page judg­ment. They were grant­ed a 72-hour stay in which time they would go be­fore the Privy Coun­cil. Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son had ap­pealed the de­ci­sion of Jus­tice Char­maine Pem­ber­ton who re­fused to grant them a writ of habeas cor­pus. On May 4, 2006, a grand ju­ry in Flori­da, re­turned an in­dict­ment against Gal­barans­ingh, Fer­gu­son and six oth­ers in re­la­tion to cor­rupt prac­tices con­cern­ing two pack­ages for the con­struc­tion of the air­port ter­mi­nal build­ing.

Months lat­er, six Amer­i­cans plead­ed guilty be­fore Judge Huck in the Mi­a­mi Fed­er­al Court, and were sen­tenced to terms be­tween six months and six years. The case against Gal­barans­ingh and Fer­gu­son is still pend­ing. In Trinidad, Fer­gu­son and Gal­barans­ingh were among sev­er­al for­mer pub­lic of­fi­cials who were charged in 2002 with var­i­ous of­fences, in­clud­ing con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, aris­ing out of the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co Air­port Ter­mi­nal build­ing.

One pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry last­ed near­ly six years, and the sec­ond is near­ing com­ple­tion in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court. An­oth­er in­quiry in­volv­ing Gal­barans­ingh, busi­ness­man Car­los John, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day and his wife Oma, is still be­fore the Mag­is­trates' Court. In their sub­mis­sions to the Privy Coun­cil, Fer­gu­son and Gal­barans­ingh ar­gued that they had al­ready en­dured sev­en years of do­mes­tic crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings in re­spect of the same al­le­ga­tions made in the Unit­ed States. They sub­mit­ted that they had en­dured hun­dreds of days of court hear­ings and sub­stan­tial le­gal costs, stress, anx­i­ety and loss of rep­u­ta­tion.

They ar­gued fur­ther that the Court of Ap­peal was wrong when it re­fused to ac­cept fresh ev­i­dence from them. They com­plained that the Ap­peal Court wrong­ly found that the of­fence of bid-rig­ging al­leged in the US case was ac­com­pa­nied by suf­fi­cient ag­gra­vat­ing fea­tures to con­sti­tute an ex­tra­di­tion crime. Fer­gu­son and Gal­barans­ingh sub­mit­ted that the Ap­peal Court was wrong to say that there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to sat­is­fy the re­quire­ment of a pri­ma fa­cie case. Al­though the State said that the busi­ness­men had no right of ap­peal to Lon­don, Fer­gu­son and Gal­barans­ingh in­sist­ed that they had.