Gail Alexan­der

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi says a wor­ry­ing trend has emerged where some are “weapon­is­ing” the courts as busi­ness ven­tures and us­ing claimants as con­ve­nient ve­hi­cles - re­sult­ing in sig­nif­i­cant monies be­ing spent by the state to pro­tect tax­pay­ers from costs.

Al-Rawi made the point in a state­ment to Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day as he di­vulged de­tails of pay­ments his min­istry had paid out to deal with le­gal mat­ters.

Among mat­ters rang­ing from refugee and chil­dren’s law is­sues, he not­ed $14m spent by the state to han­dle COVID lit­i­ga­tion mat­ters over 2020 to date.

Al-Rawi pre­sent­ed a list of at­tor­neys who worked for the min­istry dur­ing the 2010-2015 Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion’s tenure and their le­gal fees, which to­talled $636.2 mil­lion.

He pre­sent­ed a sim­i­lar list of 125 at­tor­neys who’ve worked for the AG’s of­fice un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, with fees to­talling $371.8m. He said there was a sav­ings of $2.456b in ex­pen­di­ture by re­or­gan­is­ing the three for­mer PP min­istries in­to two min­istries in his tenure.

Al-Rawi said while Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to the prin­ci­ple that the le­gal pro­fes­sion must be al­lowed every op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­charge its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and that every per­son is en­ti­tled to coun­sel, “the im­pact of a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of lit­i­ga­tion on the same is­sue and its con­se­quen­tial im­pact on the ex­pen­di­ture by the State dis­plays a wor­ry­ing trend.”

He not­ed T&T is ac­tive­ly en­gaged in the fight against col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween South Amer­i­can and T&T gangs.

“These gangs en­gage in joint ac­tiv­i­ties deal­ing with traf­fick­ing in per­sons, par­tic­u­lar­ly women and chil­dren, arms and am­mu­ni­tion and large quan­ti­ties of drugs. More re­cent­ly, these gangs have tak­en ad­van­tage of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic to or­gan­ise a thriv­ing trade in the traf­fick­ing of peo­ple un­der the pre­text of these per­sons be­ing refugees rather than eco­nom­ic mi­grants. Per­sons who en­gage in this ac­tiv­i­ty are well or­gan­ised and are able to mo­bilise safe hous­es, trans­port and doc­u­men­ta­tion pur­port­ed­ly is­sued un­der UN­HCR as well as mi­grant cer­tifi­cates,” he said.

“All of this is well sup­port­ed by a few at­tor­neys in this coun­try who in­un­date the courts with re­peat­ed ap­pli­ca­tions and who ap­pear to be in close com­mu­ni­ca­tion with these per­sons who are en­gaged in traf­fick­ing."

He added, “A con­cert­ed sus­tained ef­fort by a small group of at­tor­neys, in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to at­tor­neys who pre­vi­ous­ly held pub­lic of­fice, as well as per­sons who share cham­bers with them and who in­di­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly have in­un­dat­ed the Min­istry with Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quests re­gard­ing opin­ions, in­voic­es and oth­er doc­u­men­ta­tion which are clear­ly cov­ered by le­gal pro­fes­sion­al priv­i­lege.

“In many in­stances, they’re in­volved in lit­i­ga­tion which can ben­e­fit from cer­tain priv­i­leged dis­clo­sures. Fur­ther­more, these re­quests are usu­al­ly fol­lowed up by con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tions and ju­di­cial re­views in which the State is re­quired to ex­pend monies to de­fend the pub­lic in­ter­est.”

“These very same at­tor­neys al­so use a small group of clients who are in re­mand, or a guardian, or next of kin of chil­dren who are in the care of the state to lit­i­gate mat­ters that are to­tal­ly un­con­nect­ed with their care or­ders. These ac­tions ap­pear, on the sur­face, to be in­nocu­ous but all have sig­nif­i­cant le­gal and fi­nan­cial ex­po­sure for the tax­pay­er.”

Al-Rawi said a pre­vi­ous at­tor­ney gen­er­al, “in par­tic­u­lar has, on oc­ca­sions ini­ti­at­ed lit­i­ga­tion to chal­lenge leg­is­la­tion or to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of leg­is­la­tion which were in­tro­duced un­der the ad­min­is­tra­tion he was a part of or which he pi­lot­ed or su­per­vised in the Par­lia­ment."

He not­ed cas­es con­cern­ing the chil­dren’s leg­is­la­tion which the last ad­min­is­tra­tion brought in­to force with­out hav­ing chil­dren’s res­i­dences ready.

“This pro­lif­er­a­tion of pub­lic law lit­i­ga­tion, in re­spect of mat­ters which in some cas­es could be eas­i­ly re­solv­able by util­is­ing the Chil­dren’s Court, which is ide­al­ly suit­ed for the res­o­lu­tion of is­sues, is a process de­signed to ex­tract from the State dam­ages and cost in mat­ters in which the last ad­min­is­tra­tion was ful­ly re­spon­si­ble," he said.

He said his min­istry’s ex­ter­nal at­tor­neys have ex­pressed con­cern that some of these lit­i­gants might be used as con­ve­nient ve­hi­cles and don’t ap­pre­ci­ate the full pur­port of hav­ing their names as claimants in mat­ters.

“These are usu­al­ly peo­ple of ‘straw’ against whom an or­der for cost would yield noth­ing to the state but a suc­cess­ful ap­pli­ca­tion on a mi­nor point would yield a wind­fall for the at­tor­neys who mine in these wa­ters,’’ the AG said.

"These ven­tures are done so as to weaponise the courts in what could on­ly be a busi­ness ven­ture rather than the stat­ed vin­di­ca­tion of rights. All of these mat­ters have re­sult­ed in sig­nif­i­cant monies be­ing ex­pend­ed by the State to de­fend tax­pay­ers and to en­sure ex­ces­sive or­ders for dam­ages and costs aren’t made against the pub­lic purse."

He said the cost to the min­istry and tax­pay­ers, "... in a pan­dem­ic, for scores of COVID-19-re­lat­ed lit­i­ga­tion and in Habeas Cor­pus mat­ters stands in the last year at close to TT$14,620,340.00 for the pe­ri­od March 2020 to present."

Al-Rawi said the state “needs to be vig­i­lant to pro­tect against col­lat­er­al ini­tia­tives aimed at pro­vid­ing im­prop­er as­sis­tance to per­sons be­fore the courts.”

He al­so not­ed that not one “red, white or black cent was paid to the law firm of which his wife is a mem­ber "by the AG’s Of­fice.

Life­s­port, oth­er probes on­go­ing

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al yes­ter­day al­so de­tailed sev­er­al oth­er mat­ters which his min­istry was al­so pur­su­ing.

These in­clude:

* On­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act and oth­er laws in­to Life­s­port Mat­ter in the DPP’s hands.

* On­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­tween the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau and Dutch pros­e­cut­ing au­thor­i­ties, con­cern­ing a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a sus­pi­cion of bribery com­mit­ted by the Damen Ship­yard Group. On March 16, 2015, the Coast Guard con­tract­ed Damen for con­struc­tion of 12 ves­sels for TT$1,368,296,081.47. In 2016, the agent then sent Damen 13 in­voic­es amount­ing to TT$177,801,185.73. Dur­ing an au­dit of Damen in 2015, Ernst & Young dis­cov­ered dis­crep­an­cies re­gard­ing these for­eign agent con­tracts. The con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed by Damen.

* Civ­il claim by Gov­ern­ment in Flori­da - list­ed for tri­al - against in­di­vid­u­als and cor­po­rate en­ti­ties for rack­e­teer­ing, bid-rig­ging, brib­ing pub­lic of­fi­cials, wire fraud and mon­ey laun­der­ing - claim for dam­ages for TT$270,000,000.00.

* On­go­ing crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions of a for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al and for­mer sen­a­tor charged with con­spir­a­cy to cor­rupt­ly re­ceive fi­nan­cial re­wards from an at­tor­ney who was re­tained by the for­mer AG to con­duct sev­er­al mat­ters - a le­gal fees kick­back scheme. Oth­er such mat­ters un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion in UK and else­where.

* Con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to CLI­CO, CIB, BATT and CLF in which the tax­pay­ers con­tributed over TT$20 bil­lion in bailout sup­port. For the pe­ri­od 2012-2021, the sum in ex­cess of TT$181 mil­lion has been ex­pend­ed to De­loitte and Touche for le­gal and foren­sic ser­vices. To date, there’s an out­stand­ing bill of al­most TT$24 mil­lion payable to De­loitte and Touche. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion is in TTPS hands. Lay­ing of charges is for the DPP.

* ‘Pris­ongate’ re­lat­ing to par­tic­i­pa­tion by an at­tor­ney - a for­mer sen­a­tor - in fail­ing to dis­pense $200,000.00 to a client fol­low­ing a court or­der and sev­er­al re­lat­ed mat­ters.