Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley says jus­tice in T&T was de­feat­ed when the US ex­tra­di­tion or­der for busi­ness­men Ish Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son was quashed by Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh. Row­ley's com­ment was made in re­sponse to a ques­tion on Mon­day's rul­ing. He spoke dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at his of­fice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day. Asked if he saw the rul­ing as a de­feat for At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Row­ley said: "I wouldn't term it a de­feat for the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al...if there is any de­feat it would be for jus­tice in Trinidad and To­ba­go." Row­ley said it was Ram­lo­gan who "fa­cil­i­tat­ed the whole process...So hav­ing got the ex­pect­ed re­sult, I wouldn't call it a de­feat." Row­ley al­so said he found the "in­ter­ven­tion to be very time­ly."

Ques­tioned fur­ther on the mat­ter, Row­ley said the mat­ter was be­fore the court for a very long time and "per­sons made po­lit­i­cal com­mit­ments about it and they de­liv­ered." Gal­barans­ingh, own­er of North­ern Con­struc­tion Group of Com­pa­nies, is want­ed in the US to an­swer a 13-count in­dict­ment, in­clud­ing charges of mon­ey laun­der­ing in­volv­ing US$1 mil­lion (TT$6.3 mil­lion) dur­ing the pe­ri­od June 19, 2001, to De­cem­ber 10, 2001. Fer­gu­son, for­mer CEO of Mar­itime Gen­er­al In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny, is want­ed in the US on an 82-count in­dict­ment, in­clud­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing charges, in­volv­ing US$3,255,345 (TT$20,508,673). It is al­leged to have oc­curred from No­vem­ber 24, 2000, to March 28, 2002.