Robert Alon­zo

Even as busi­ness­men Steve Fer­gu­son and Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh made a last-ditch ef­fort in the High Court dur­ing the wee hours of yes­ter­day morn­ing to avoid ex­tra­di­tion, they may not be ex­tra­dit­ed to the Unit­ed States un­til Oc­to­ber 18. In a state­ment yes­ter­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said the US Gov­ern­ment has in­di­cat­ed that au­thor­i­ties there would not be in a po­si­tion to arrange for the de­par­ture of the for­mer UNC fi­nanciers un­til next week Mon­day. "To­day (Colum­bus Day) is a pub­lic hol­i­day in the USA and cer­tain in­ter­nal ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures and arrange­ments must be com­plied with," the re­lease said. The state­ment came hours af­ter Fer­gu­son and Gal­barans­ingh, through their at­tor­neys, filed a last-minute ap­pli­ca­tion late Sat­ur­day for a stay of their ex­tra­di­tion.

The ex parte mat­ter came up be­fore jus­tice Vashist Kokaram on Sat­ur­day night and at the end of lengthy le­gal ar­gu­ments by at­tor­neys Fyard Ho­sein, SC, and Nyree Al­fon­so, the judge dis­missed the ap­pli­ca­tion for a fur­ther stay. It was ear­li­er on Sat­ur­day that Ram­lo­gan signed the ex­tra­di­tion or­der, grant­i­ng the US Gov­ern­ment's re­quest to have both men an­swer al­leged cor­rup­tion charges. They face a to­tal of 95 charges aris­ing out of the con­struc­tion of the $1.6 bil­lion Pi­ar­co Air­port ter­mi­nal build­ing. The de­fen­dants' lawyers claimed it was through the me­dia on Sat­ur­day that they found out Ram­lo­gan had signed the or­der. The at­tor­neys al­so pre­sent­ed a news re­lease from the AG's of­fice in sup­port of their ap­pli­ca­tion.

But the judge said he was "loath" to act on the news re­lease which, he said, pur­port­ed to be a de­ci­sion of the AG. The judge al­so held that it was un­for­tu­nate that no rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the AG's of­fice could be con­tact­ed to pro­vide clar­i­fi­ca­tion for the ap­pli­cants. The mat­ter end­ed around 12.30 am. But seek­ing to clar­i­fy his po­si­tion yes­ter­day, Ram­lo­gan, in a re­lease, said the de­ci­sion to ex­tra­dite the de­fen­dants was com­mu­ni­cat­ed to their lawyers yes­ter­day. He said he was not aware of the ex parte ap­pli­ca­tion by the ap­pli­cants. He said the ap­pli­cants' lawyers wrote him yes­ter­day, re­quest­ing a stay of his ex­tra­di­tion de­ci­sion.

"The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has in­di­cat­ed that he is un­able to give his con­sent to the re­quest­ed stay of ex­e­cu­tion of his ex­tra­di­tion de­ci­sion," the state­ment said. "The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has in­formed the US Gov­ern­ment of his de­ci­sion to ac­cede to the re­quest­ed ex­tra­di­tion." Ram­lo­gan al­so not­ed that the US Gov­ern­ment in­di­cat­ed that it would not be in a po­si­tion to arrange for the de­par­ture of the de­fen­dants un­til Oc­to­ber 18. Late yes­ter­day, at­tor­neys for the two ac­cused busi­ness­men re­ceived an of­fi­cial let­ter from the AG's de­part­ment al­so stat­ing he (the AG) had been ad­vised by the US gov­ern­ment that au­thor­i­ties there would not be in a po­si­tion to arrange for their clients' de­par­ture from Trinidad un­til Oc­to­ber 18.

"This means that your clients will suf­fer no prej­u­dice as there will be am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to ap­proach the court if they so de­sire," the AG's let­ter to the at­tor­neys added.