Geisha Kow­lessar

The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion has been thrown in­to a tail­spin yet again, this time by the res­ig­na­tion of its deputy chair­man, for­mer High Court Judge Se­bas­t­ian Ven­tour, who served for on­ly sev­en months on the com­mis­sion.This means that Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona may have to search for an­oth­er can­di­date to fill the post of deputy chair­man.Ven­tour, who re­tired in 2012, was ap­point­ed a judge for yes­ter­day on­ly, as he had to de­liv­er three out­stand­ing judge­ments, in­clud­ing one in a case in­volv­ing Mo­ra Ven hold­ings Ltd ver­sus Kr­ish­na Per­sad and As­so­ciates Ltd.In his let­ter of res­ig­na­tion, Ven­tour ex­plained that as a mem­ber of the com­mis­sion, he was pre­vent­ed by law from de­liv­er­ing the judg­ments.The Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent is­sued a re­lease yes­ter­day to say that the Pres­i­dent swore in Ven­tour as a tem­po­rary judge yes­ter­day, on the ad­vice of the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (JLSC), af­ter he re­signed from the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion on Wednes­day. The JLSC is head­ed by the Chief Jus­tice.

Ven­tour's res­ig­na­tion means the work of the com­mis­sion has been halt­ed as there is no one with a le­gal back­ground to con­sti­tute the com­mis­sion's board.Key in­ves­ti­ga­tions could be tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed, such as the e-mail probe and a re­quest by the Op­po­si­tion to probe At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan's pur­chase of two Range Rover SU­Vs us­ing tax ex­emp­tions as a state of­fi­cial.Ques­tions have al­so been raised over Ven­tour's lo­cus stan­di for writ­ing judg­ments, since he re­tired from the bench in 2012.Con­cerns were al­so raised over whether Ven­tour may not on­ly have breached the code of ethics for judges but al­so have con­tra­vened the reg­u­la­tions for mem­bers of the com­mis­sion.In re­sponse to the de­vel­op­ments, chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion Ken Gor­don said the work of the com­mis­sion would not be af­fect­ed be­cause of Ven­tour's res­ig­na­tion.Gor­don said in 2013 when Gladys Gafoor, then deputy chair­man of the com­mis­sion was sus­pend­ed the com­mis­sion con­tin­ued its work."I am as­sur­ing you that the com­mis­sion can do oth­er things apart from meet­ing, (like) the oth­er sup­port­ing things (such as) prepa­ra­tion and so on, that's how we han­dled it last year," he added.

Gor­don said he ex­pect­ed Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona to act prompt­ly on the reap­point­ment of a com­mis­sion­er.Asked whether Ven­tour do­ing ju­di­cial work while still work­ing in the com­mis­sion could be con­sid­ered to a con­flict of in­ter­est, Gor­don said: "I think that's an as­sump­tion which is not quite cor­rect. They (the cas­es) were pre­pared but the point is that he couldn't de­liv­er them."

Gor­don said he was op­ti­mistic that Ven­tour would be re-ap­point­ed to the com­mis­sion with­in a mat­ter of days. Asked whether he be­lieved the im­age of the com­mis­sion was tar­nished due to Ven­tour's res­ig­na­tion, he said: "Ab­solute­ly no way."– with re­port­ing by Nadaleen Singh

Ques­tions to be an­swered:Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal said Ven­tour's tem­po­rary ap­point­ment should have been made im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter he left the bench so that he could com­plete the judg­ments."The se­quence of events sug­gests he was made a tem­po­rary judge on­ly for the pur­pose of the de­liv­er­ing the judg­ments, which sug­gests that pri­or to his reap­point­ment, he must have been de­lib­er­at­ing and con­tem­plat­ing these judg­ments, which is the work of a judge," she point­ed out."That means he would have been do­ing that when he was a mem­ber of the com­mis­sion which law does not per­mit a judge to sit as a one of its mem­bers," See­ta­hal said.

Say­ing the mat­ter need­ed to be ex­plained im­me­di­ate­ly, See­ta­hal main­tained no one should be do­ing the work of a judge when in fact they were not one."Sec­ond­ly, do­ing the work of a judge when that per­son is a mem­ber of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, I would ex­pect the Ju­di­cia­ry ex­plains this, as it is not the first time that a re­tired judge has been ap­point­ed as a tem­po­rary judge to de­liv­er­judg­ments, and the same ques­tions keep aris­ing," See­ta­hal added.

She rec­om­mend­ed that a prop­er ex­ten­sion should be grant­ed im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter a judge re­tired so he or she could com­plete out­stand­ing judg­ments.Echo­ing See­ta­hal's view, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Gen­er­al said it was "not de­sir­able" for a judge who has re­tired sub­se­quent­ly to de­liv­er a judg­ment and every ef­fort must be made to en­sure that judg­ments are de­liv­ered dur­ing the tenure of judges.De­scrib­ing Ven­tour's res­ig­na­tion as a "com­plete shock and dis­ap­point­ment," Ram­lo­gan said it had left a void at a time when the com­mis­sion was sta­bil­is­ing in the af­ter­math of so many fum­bles and false starts.Ven­tour was sworn in on Ju­ly 1, 2013 to serve on the com­mis­sion.At that time ques­tions arose as to whether or not there was a con­flict of in­ter­est, as Ven­tour was serv­ing on the com­mis­sion and held a gov­ern­ment post­ing on the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form Com­mis­sion. He stepped down from that com­mis­sion the fol­low­ing month.

What the law says

Sec­tion 4(5) of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act says: "A per­son shall not be qual­i­fied to hold of­fice as a mem­ber of the com­mis­sion where he is a per­son in pub­lic life or a per­son ex­er­cis­ing a pub­lic func­tion."

In­ves­ti­ga­tions could­con­tin­ue–Al-Rawi

At­tor­ney Faris Al-Rawi, a PNM Sen­a­tor, said the com­mis­sion could still func­tion but to a lim­it­ed ex­tent.He said the com­mis­sion could still con­duct in­ves­ti­ga­tions but when it came to de­ci­sion-mak­ing it was hand­i­capped, es­pe­cial­ly since Ven­tour held a crit­i­cal role."Even though the con­sti­tu­tion of the com­mis­sion it­self is prej­u­diced it is pos­si­ble that work con­tin­u­ing in the com­mis­sion will pro­ceed."The abil­i­ty to make de­ci­sions may be­come dif­fi­cult and we hope that the work of the com­mis­sion would not be stymied by any un­due de­lay in the ap­point­ment of an ap­pro­pri­ate per­son," Al-Rawi added.

Con­tro­ver­sial Com­mis­sion

For years the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion has been mired in con­tro­ver­sy:

�2 2009: Chair­man John Mar­tin and all the com­mis­sion­ers re­signed in the wake of a damn­ing High Court judg­ment which found it had act­ed in bad faith and was guilty of mis­fea­sance in con­nec­tion with a re­port which led to a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion of Diego Mar­tin West MP Dr Kei­th Row­ley's role in the Lan­date af­fair.

The court ruled the com­mis­sion should have giv­en Row­ley a hear­ing be­fore re­fer­ring the mat­ter to the DPP.

�2 2011: The cloud of con­tro­ver­sy con­tin­ued when with­in hours of its for­ma­tion, re­tired Jus­tice of Ap­peal Zain­ool Ho­sein re­signed, say­ing he had been promised the post of deputy chair­man but it was in­stead giv­en to Jef­frey Mc­Far­lane.

�2 A week lat­er, its chair­man Fr Hen­ry Charles (now de­ceased) dis­cov­ered he could not serve on the com­mis­sion ac­cord­ing to canon law and was forced to quit. He al­so re­vealed he had pla­gia­rised the work of two writ­ers in his T&T Guardian col­umn.

�2Dr Er­ic St Cyr re­lin­quished his po­si­tion as chair­man af­ter Ude­cott chair­man Jear­lean John threat­ened le­gal ac­tion be­cause he in­cor­rect­ly and pre­ma­ture­ly told a re­porter the com­mis­sion was in­ves­ti­gat­ing John.

�2 2012: Gladys Gafoor was sus­pend­ed by for­mer pres­i­dent Maxwell Richards as deputy chair­man. She chal­lenged the move in court but lost.

�2 2013: The com­mis­sion's cur­rent chair­man Ken Gor­don found him­self in con­tro­ver­sy for hav­ing a pri­vate meet­ing at his home with Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­lat­ing to the email­gate in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Gor­don has main­tained he did noth­ing wrong.