Fran­cis Joseph

British Queen's Coun­sel, Alan New­man, who rep­re­sent­ed Bas­deo Pan­day at his tri­al on three charges of fail­ing to de­clare his Lon­don bank ac­count to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in 2006, is now in the cor­ner of Ch­agua­nas West MP, Jack Warn­er, prepar­ing to file a slan­der writ against Pan­day. New­man ar­rived in Trinidad yes­ter­day af­ter­noon and was met at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port by Warn­er, the first vice-pres­i­dent of Fi­fa. Warn­er has brought New­man to Trinidad to pre­pare doc­u­ments and to launch the le­gal chal­lenge to al­le­ga­tions made by Pan­day on a ra­dio pro­gramme last week.

New­man is no stranger to Trinidad and To­ba­go. He has rep­re­sent­ed lo­cal par­ties be­fore the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil on six oc­ca­sions. The most no­table was his rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Pan­day be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc Nicolls in March 2006 when the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion went on tri­al on three charges of know­ing­ly fail­ing to de­clare his Natwest bank ac­count in Wim­ble­don, Lon­don, to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion for the years 1997, 1998 and 1999. Pan­day was found guilty on April 24, 2006, and sen­tenced to two years in prison. New­man was not in­volved in the ap­peal as Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj SC ap­peared in the Court of Ap­peal which quashed the con­vic­tion and set aside the sen­tence on the ground of ap­par­ent bias by the Chief Mag­is­trate.

The Court of Ap­peal or­dered a re­tri­al, but Pan­day chal­lenged this in the Privy Coun­cil. In Lon­don, Pan­day was rep­re­sent­ed by Richard Clay­ton QC. The Law Lords or­dered Pan­day to face a sec­ond tri­al, but he has filed a ju­di­cial re­view case chal­leng­ing the re­tri­al.

New­man was called to the British Bar in 1968 and made a Queen's Coun­sel in 1989. He spe­cialis­es in ju­di­cial re­view, ex­tra­di­tion and com­mer­cial law. He has ap­peared in the Caribbean in sev­er­al high pro­file cas­es. In 2006, he rep­re­sent­ed the Ma­ha Sab­ha in their bat­tle with the Gov­ern­ment over the de­lay by the State in grant­i­ng a broad­cast li­cence to Cen­tral Broad­cast­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed. New­man al­so rep­re­sent­ed the 18 Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment who did not re­ceive their salaries fol­low­ing the 18-18 tie of 2001.

The Privy Coun­cil ruled that the MPs were en­ti­tled to their salaries from the day af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tions, once they had tak­en their oaths of al­le­giance. Even be­fore he ap­peared for Pan­day in the in­tegri­ty tri­al, New­man rep­re­sent­ed the Cou­va North MP in a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion in the Privy Coun­cil in which he con­tend­ed that Pan­day was charged un­der the 1987 In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act, which was re­pealed by the 2000 Act. He lost that case. He suc­cess­ful­ly rep­re­sent­ed two po­lice of­fi­cers, Eu­se­bio Coop­er and Clif­ford Bal­bosa, against the Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion on the is­sue of pro­mo­tions. He is al­so on record as ap­pear­ing in the 1994 Privy Coun­cil case of Com­mer­cial Fi­nance Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed ver­sus Ram­s­ingh Ma­habir, as well as Hearde v Ma­habir Singh, a 1992 Privy Coun­cil case–both mat­ters deal­ing with re­trench­ment.