Richard Lord

In a new twist to the saga of the Range Rover bought by In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) deputy leader An­na De­onar­ine, the orig­i­nal own­er, a UK com­pa­ny, wants the car back. A lo­cal lawyer act­ing for the UK com­pa­ny's at­tor­ney has writ­ten to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan de­mand­ing its im­me­di­ate re­turn.Karl Hud­son-Phillips, QC, spoke with Ram­lo­gan on the mat­ter yes­ter­day.Ram­lo­gan last night told a pub­lic meet­ing of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship in Princes Town that the ve­hi­cle would be sent to Eng­land and not re­turned to De­onar­ine.At­tor­ney Jes­si­ca Maicoo, who is in Hud­son-Phillips' cham­bers, wrote to the AG yes­ter­day "in the mat­ter of the re­cov­ery of that black Range Rover diesel sport es­tate 2.7 TDV6 S 5 au­to­mat­ic ve­hi­cle lo­cal­ly li­censed as PCM 1100 and bear­ing the chas­sis/frame no SAL­ISAA138A179106."

Maicoo wrote, "We have been re­tained by Mr Bar­ry Han­cock of BR In­ter­na­tion­al Ltd, who has the ben­e­fit of a du­ly no­ta­rized Pow­er of At­tor­ney dat­ed 17th No­vem­ber 2011 from Lom­bard Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment, the lat­ter be­ing the le­gal own­er of the sub­ject ve­hi­cle which was re­port­ed stolen in the Unit­ed King­dom be­tween May 2008 and De­cem­ber 2008."The let­ter said the ex­act cir­cum­stances in which the ve­hi­cle was stolen and shipped to Trinidad were un­known, but Maicoo was in­struct­ed that the ve­hi­cle, "which was the sub­ject of a con­tract hire pur­chase be­tween Lom­bard Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment and one Nabeel Shah was shipped to Trinidad in De­cem­ber 2008 with­out Lom­bard Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment's knowl­edge or con­sent."She not­ed that "it is con­firmed that the ve­hi­cle is in the pos­ses­sion of the State," and called up­on "the rel­e­vant gov­ern­ment de­part­ment, through the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, to hand over the ve­hi­cle to us on be­half of Mr Han­cock, whom we rep­re­sent so that the same may be dis­posed of ac­cord­ing to the di­rec­tion of the own­er."

The let­ter was copied to De­onar­ine

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the mat­ter, Ram­lo­gan said based on the cur­rent state of af­fairs, he had no doubt that act­ing CoP Stephen Williams "in due course will take a ma­ture look and re­view this mat­ter in the in­ter­est of jus­tice and in the pub­lic in­ter­est."A Sun­day Guardian ex­clu­sive re­port­ed that De­onar­ine was named as a crit­i­cal link in a UK po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the theft of the stolen lux­u­ry ve­hi­cle.De­onar­ine has main­tained that she is not at fault and was a vic­tim in the mat­ter. At­tempts to con­tact De­onar­ine last evening were un­suc­cess­ful as calls to her cell­phone went unan­swered.

AG com­ments:Ram­lo­gan said yes­ter­day that the doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to the Range Rover were "quite com­pelling and re­fute a num­ber of state­ments made by De­onar­ine."He said De­onar­ine need­ed to ex­plain her claim that she did not im­port the ve­hi­cle, when the State had is­sued an im­port li­cence to her com­pa­ny and it was pur­suant to that li­cence that the ve­hi­cle was im­port­ed.Ram­lo­gan said he was not sur­prised that no one was charged, but was sur­prised at the way the in­ves­ti­ga­tions were car­ried out, "be­cause it is clear that crit­i­cal pieces of the jig­saw puz­zle are miss­ing."He al­so said he was not sur­prised by PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley's "jump­ing to the de­fence" of De­onar­ine.He al­so dis­missed Row­ley's claim that he was vi­o­lat­ing his oath of of­fice, in­sist­ing he was com­mit­ted to serv­ing the best in­ter­est of the na­tion.