The keys to the build­ing which will soon be­come the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions were hand­ed over yes­ter­day to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour af­ter he re­ceived them from Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs (AGLA) in a state­ment is­sued said that the keys to the First Cit­i­zens Bank build­ing on St Vin­cent Street were hand­ed over from the Fi­nance Min­is­ter.

The AGLA re­vealed that the build­ing will ac­com­mo­date the ex­pan­sion of the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

The state­ment read: “This marks a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in the jour­ney to­ward en­hanced op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty, equip­ping the DPP’s Of­fice with the nec­es­sary tools to con­tin­ue up­hold­ing jus­tice and ef­fec­tive­ly serv­ing the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

It fur­ther stat­ed that re­fur­bish­ment works will be­gin soon to out­fit the build­ing with the nec­es­sary hu­man and phys­i­cal re­sources to fos­ter greater ef­fi­cien­cy and col­lab­o­ra­tion in the DPP’s vi­tal mis­sion.

When asked by Guardian Me­dia about a time­frame for the com­ple­tion of the re­fur­bish­ment process, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ar­mour re­frained from pro­vid­ing specifics but of­fered re­as­sur­ance.

“The han­dover of keys to­day (Fri­day) al­lows us to be­gin ap­prais­ing the re­fur­bish­ment needs in con­sul­ta­tion with the DPP’s re­quests and guid­ance. I can on­ly say that we are com­mit­ted to ex­pe­dit­ing this process,” he said.

Mean­while, DPP Roger Gas­pard wel­comed the de­vel­op­ment. “This should, up­on com­ple­tion, help re­solve our spa­tial chal­lenges,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

This lat­est progress fol­lows a pub­lic im­passe be­tween At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ar­mour and DPP Gas­pard over a pre­vi­ous­ly iden­ti­fied build­ing on Park Street, Port-of-Spain. Dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing af­ter the 2024 Bud­get, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ar­mour dis­closed that $55 mil­lion in rental fees had been paid for the Park Street build­ing since 2019, but the DPP and his staff had nev­er moved in, cit­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

At one point, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so crit­i­cised the DPP for not oc­cu­py­ing the build­ing.

How­ev­er, for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, de­fend­ed Gas­pard and his staff’s de­ci­sion, stat­ing that af­ter con­duct­ing an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he con­clud­ed the DPP should not be blamed for the ex­pens­es in­curred on the build­ing.