RHON­DOR DOWLAT

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has called on Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, to at­tend a meet­ing ear­ly this week to dis­cuss the is­sue over the $45 mil­lion spent on the of­fice of the DPP that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley raised last week as well as ad­dress oth­er mat­ters.

Sun­day Guardian was re­li­ably in­formed that At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour will meet with Gas­pard on Wednes­day at 9 am to get to the bot­tom of is­sues sur­round­ing the build­ing which has been sourced to house the DPP’s of­fice at the cor­ner of Park and Hen­ry streets but re­mains un­oc­cu­pied af­ter close to three years. The DPP’s of­fice is al­so faced with grave staff short­ages which could lead to a col­lapse of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

PM Row­ley had dis­closed at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) pub­lic meet­ing in Barataria on Thurs­day night that the build­ing was com­plet­ed but not “a foot stepped in­to the struc­ture.” In 2019 the build­ing was re­port­ed­ly giv­en to for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi by Nid­co and hand­ed over for oc­cu­pa­tion by the DPP’s of­fice. The PM ac­cused the DPP’s of­fice of wast­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey with de­mands for se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures–bul­let­proof glass and oth­er ad­di­tions–at the build­ing. The Gov­ern­ment has been giv­en a three-year con­tract for the build­ing and has been pay­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in rent for the un­oc­cu­pied prop­er­ty. The PM said apart from throw­ing mon­ey away in rent, ef­forts to out­fit the build­ing al­so went down the drain.  

In 2014, the for­mer Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment had cho­sen the Park Street build­ing, up­on the re­quest of the DPP. The DPP had agreed to move in­to the build­ing “sub­ject to se­cu­ri­ty vet­ting,” the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) said yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to an Ex­press re­port, the DPP was al­leged­ly ad­vised that the build­ing was un­fit for oc­cu­pan­cy by a spe­cial branch of­fi­cer be­cause it was not bul­let­proofed and the lives of the DPP and his staff could be at risk once there.

 The DPP’s of­fice is cur­rent­ly housed at Win­sure Build­ing, Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain.

The proposed DPP’s office at the corner of Henry and Park streets, Port-of-Spain, which has remained unoccupied.

ROBERTO CODALLO

Rift brew­ing be­tween PM, DPP’s of­fice

Is­sues about the DPP’s of­fice and a seem­ing rift be­tween the of­fice and the PM came up last week af­ter the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of one of the cor­rup­tion cas­es re­lat­ing to the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port de­vel­op­ment project.  

The Pi­ar­co 3 case per­tained to a £25,000 bribe al­leged­ly re­ceived by for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, and his wife, Oma Pan­day, and al­leged­ly paid by for­mer Cab­i­net min­is­ter Car­los John and busi­ness­man Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh as an al­leged in­duce­ment in re­la­tion to the air­port project.

Af­ter spend­ing al­most two decades be­fore the courts, Pan­day, his wife, John and  Gal­barans­ingh have been freed of cor­rup­tion charges re­lat­ed to the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Ap­pear­ing be­fore Mag­is­trate Adia Mo­hammed in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court last week, Gas­pard an­nounced his de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue the charges against the group. Gas­pard said that his de­ci­sion was based on the low prob­a­bil­i­ty of his of­fice se­cur­ing con­vic­tions in the case.

He ex­plained that sev­er­al key wit­ness­es had died since the group was charged in 2006 and one main wit­ness is now el­der­ly and lives abroad. He al­so not­ed that the ac­cused had a “fair ar­gu­ment” that they faced “pre­sumed, pre­sump­tive and spe­cif­ic” prej­u­dice in the case.

The case against the group was one of four re­lat­ed to the air­port project ini­ti­at­ed fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Cana­di­an foren­sic ex­pert Robert Lindquist.

Fol­low­ing this, Gas­pard, in a ra­dio in­ter­view last week, warned of a col­lapse of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem due to se­vere staff short­ages at his of­fice. He said there was a need for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 129 at­tor­neys, but cur­rent­ly, there are 58 pros­e­cu­tors.

In an­oth­er ma­jor case in Oc­to­ber 2022, Gas­pard dis­con­tin­ued cor­rup­tion charges against for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen. Gas­pard had an­nounced his de­ci­sion dur­ing a sta­tus hear­ing of the duo’s case be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle.

He ex­plained that his de­ci­sion was based on the re­fusal of the State’s main wit­ness in the case, King’s Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son, to tes­ti­fy be­fore the de­ter­mi­na­tion of his civ­il law­suit over an in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment with for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi.

In the law­suit, Nel­son claimed that the agree­ment was giv­en to him be­fore he agreed to im­pli­cate the duo and was sub­se­quent­ly breached.

Gas­pard stat­ed it would not be fair to have the duo “in lim­bo” while Nel­son is pur­su­ing his lit­i­ga­tion and not­ed that the charges may be re­in­stat­ed once it is com­plet­ed.

On May 2, 2019, Nel­son, Ram­lo­gan, and Ramdeen were slapped with three cor­rup­tion charges.

The trio was ac­cused of con­spir­ing to­geth­er to re­ceive, con­ceal and trans­fer crim­i­nal prop­er­ty name­ly the re­wards giv­en to Ram­lo­gan by Nel­son for be­ing ap­point­ed to rep­re­sent the State in sev­er­al cas­es; of con­spir­ing to­geth­er to cor­rupt­ly give Ram­lo­gan a per­cent­age of the funds, and of con­spir­ing with to make Ram­lo­gan mis­be­have in pub­lic of­fice by re­ceiv­ing the funds.

It was lat­er re­vealed that Nel­son had en­tered in­to a plea agree­ment with the DPP’s Of­fice in ex­change for his tes­ti­mo­ny against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen.

Mean­while, the Op­po­si­tion UNC slammed Row­ley for what they called an at­tack on the of­fice of the DPP. UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark claimed the PM’s “bit­ter­ness” to­ward Gas­pard had noth­ing to do with an emp­ty build­ing but rather his de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue one of the Pi­ar­co cas­es.

The UNC ques­tioned whether the PM was try­ing to frus­trate the DPP out of of­fice as he chose a po­lit­i­cal plat­form to make his state­ment.

Sources in the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty said the mo­tives are “po­lit­i­cal” as “the Gov­ern­ment is not look­ing good as these mat­ters are thrown out, mean­ing if there are no con­vic­tions for the State it will be like egg on the PM’s face” as the mat­ters in­volve peo­ple con­nect­ed to the UNC.

President of the Law Association of T&T Sophia Chote

Se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns for pros­e­cu­tors an on­go­ing con­cern–Sophia Chote

Pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion Sophia Chote yes­ter­day ex­plained that se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns for pros­e­cu­tors are “a live and on­go­ing con­cern.”

“Let us not for­get that Dana See­ta­hal, SC, was in the mid­dle of the pros­e­cu­tion of a no­to­ri­ous case when she was killed. I am not aware what has been put in place for the se­cu­ri­ty of pros­e­cu­tors gen­er­al­ly apart from the oc­ca­sion­al as­sign­ment of Spe­cial Branch of­fi­cers,” Chote said.

“The rec­om­men­da­tion for bul­let­proof glass was made to the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion by the TTPS or their ad­vis­ers for the pro­posed of­fices of the DPP. I am shocked, to say the least, that af­ter the pas­sage of sev­er­al years, this mat­ter and oth­er mat­ters per­tain­ing to the se­cu­ri­ty of pros­e­cu­tors re­main un­re­solved.”

Israel Khan, SC

NICOLE DRAYTON

Cab­i­net, CJ, must ex­plain–Is­rael Khan, SC

Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Is­rael Khan, SC, mean­while, said that cer­tain­ly “the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is on the brink of col­lapse,” and ques­tioned whether the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing sit­u­a­tion at the DPP’s of­fice was an ul­te­ri­or mo­tive to bring Gas­pard to his knees.

Con­cern­ing the new of­fice for the DPP, Khan said that the DPP ought to ex­plain why he did not oc­cu­py that build­ing af­ter $45 mil­lion was spent on rent and ren­o­va­tions.

He said the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion un­der the Chief Jus­tice and the Cab­i­net al­so need to ex­plain the sit­u­a­tion with the de­ple­tion of lawyers and “why they are not pay­ing at­ten­tion to this as­pect of fur­nish­ing the DPP with the nec­es­sary staff be­cause the crim­i­nals are get­ting the im­pres­sion that even if they are charged there would be no pros­e­cu­tion.”

Khan said in 2014 un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment they agreed to have 114 lawyers at­tached to the DPP. This, how­ev­er, has not been achieved.

 “You can­not in­crease the courts and give mil­lions of dol­lars and in­crease the bud­get to han­dle the po­lice in mak­ing of his in­ves­ti­ga­tions and peo­ple be­ing charged, and they don’t have the nec­es­sary lawyers in the of­fice to pros­e­cute.

“So, the Prime Min­is­ter and the Cab­i­net must give ex­pla­na­tions as to why the lawyers are not there. They have to give an ex­pla­na­tion. Is it an ul­te­ri­or mo­tive to bring the DPP to his knees or are they spin­ning top in mud?”