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Friday, February 28, 2025

Final report on probe into ‘missing file’ to be presented in Senate today

by

38 days ago
20250121
Attorney General Reginald Armour

Attorney General Reginald Armour

OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENT

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Sen­ate will to­day be pre­sent­ed with the fi­nal re­port of the probe in­to the dis­ap­pear­ance of a file re­lat­ed to the ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case filed by men who were award­ed $20 mil­lion af­ter the State failed to de­fend the mat­ter.

The re­port will be laid by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour when the Sen­ate re­sumes fol­low­ing the Christ­mas re­cess.

In Feb­ru­ary 2023, Ar­mour ap­point­ed re­tired Jus­tices Stan­ley John and Rol­ston Nel­son to probe the mat­ter con­cern­ing the State’s fail­ure to file a de­fence in the ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion law­suit filed by nine men who were ac­quit­ted of the 2006 kid­nap­ping and mur­der of Xtra Foods CEO Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man.

The group’s le­gal team head­ed by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, had ob­tained a de­fault judg­ment against the State in 2021.

This was fol­lowed by the court’s as­sess­ment of dam­ages award­ing the $20m in Jan­u­ary 2023.

The de­ci­sion was chal­lenged by the State and stayed by the courts in De­cem­ber 2023. How­ev­er, the group’s le­gal team filed an ur­gent ap­peal seek­ing to over­turn that.

The is­sue gained na­tion­al at­ten­tion in ear­ly 2023 due to the State’s fail­ure to file a de­fence in the mat­ter which Ar­mour blamed on the “miss­ing file.”

The file was de­liv­ered in May 2020 to the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s of­fice - a sub­di­vi­sion of the AG’s of­fice - and an of­fi­cer of that de­part­ment had signed for ac­cept­ing it. The record showed that on June 22, 2020, a file was opened for the mat­ter and was sent to the then So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al (Car­ol Her­nan­dez) for as­sign­ment. There­after the file dis­ap­peared.

But soon af­ter re­tired Jus­tices John and Nel­son were ap­point­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2023 to ad­vise the State on the way for­ward, the file reap­peared and was hand­ed over to act­ing So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al Kar­leen Seenath.

The probe was to en­quire in­to the facts and cir­cum­stances re­lat­ing to the case com­menc­ing from June 22, 2020 when ser­vice of the claim form and state­ment of case were ef­fect­ed, in­clud­ing the court’s Jan­u­ary 2023 de­ci­sion. Al­so to be con­sid­ered was the han­dover of the file to the Act­ing So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al on Feb­ru­ary 6, 2023.

The team was al­so to probe the file’s dis­ap­pear­ance - re­gard­ing which the AG had said there was some­thing sin­is­ter - and its reap­pear­ance.

John and re­tired ACP Pamela Schuller-Hinds de­liv­ered an 18-page in­ter­im re­port in April 2023. The fi­nal re­port was ex­pect­ed to ad­dress items in­clud­ing pro­ce­dures at the min­istry con­cern­ing man­age­ment and con­duct of civ­il lit­i­ga­tion in­volv­ing the State and rec­om­men­da­tions to im­prove this.

The sub­se­quent 60-page re­port - ac­cord­ing to John’s state­ment in the Guardian - was “cen­tred around the com­plete re­struc­tur­ing” of the Min­istry’s Civ­il Law de­part­ment and dig­i­tal­is­ing most of the work.

The full re­port was not pub­lished.

The Sen­ate is al­so ex­pect­ed to de­bate the changes to the Coat of Arms which was passed in the House last week.


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