The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has un­til next week to de­cide whether it would dis­close a re­port of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the dis­ap­pear­ance of a case file which led to nine men, for­mer­ly ac­cused of the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of busi­ness­woman Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man, be­ing award­ed a $20 mil­lion de­fault judg­ment for ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion. 

In Sep­tem­ber, one of the group’s lawyers from Free­dom Law Cham­bers, Ganesh Sa­roop filed a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) ap­pli­ca­tion seek­ing the dis­clo­sure from the AG’s Of­fice. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the AG’s Of­fice re­quest­ed an ex­ten­sion up to next Fri­day to re­spond. The group’s lawyers con­sent­ed to the ex­ten­sion. 

In late Jan­u­ary, last year, High Court Mas­ter Martha Alexan­der as­sessed the com­pen­sa­tion for the group af­ter they re­ceived a de­fault judg­ment over the fail­ure of the AG’s Of­fice to de­fend their case. 

A pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tion was launched amid pub­lic furore over what tran­spired and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour re­vealed that the case was un­de­fend­ed as the file went miss­ing af­ter be­ing served on his of­fice. 

Ar­mour said: “I would not al­low my­self at this time, be­cause of due process, to ut­ter what I think oc­curred but it is sin­is­ter.”

Ar­mour ap­point­ed for­mer High Court Judge Stan­ley John and re­tired As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) Pamela Schullera-Hinds to probe what took place and make rec­om­men­da­tions to pre­vent a re­cur­rence. 

John and Schullera-Hinds de­liv­ered an in­ter­im re­port in March be­fore de­liv­er­ing their 60-page fi­nal re­port in June.

While their fi­nal re­port was not pub­lished, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the duo made sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions in­clud­ing a com­plete re­struc­tur­ing of the Civ­il Law De­part­ment (CLD) of the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs (AGLA).

In an in­ter­view with this news­pa­per in ear­ly Ju­ly, John said: “It’s re­al­ly a re­struc­tur­ing of the Civ­il Law De­part­ment. The re­port is cen­tred around the com­plete re­struc­tur­ing of that de­part­ment and dig­i­tal­is­ing most of the work, you know, get­ting rid of the pa­per.”

How­ev­er, he not­ed that there was no time frame for the rec­om­men­da­tions to be im­ple­ment­ed.

“There is no time frame. That is up to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al now. Some of it has to be tak­en to Cab­i­net be­cause of some of the changes we are rec­om­mend­ing. But that is a mat­ter now for the ex­ec­u­tive,” he said. 

In De­cem­ber, last year, High Court Judge Joan Charles up­held an ap­pli­ca­tion to set aside the de­fault judg­ment she grant­ed in Jan­u­ary 2021 as well as the sub­se­quent as­sess­ment of dam­ages done by Mas­ter Alexan­der. 

The group’s lawyers filed an ap­peal chal­leng­ing the de­ci­sion. The ap­peal was ex­pe­dit­ed and the Court of Ap­peal heard sub­mis­sions ear­li­er this year. The Ap­peal Court is yet to de­liv­er its rul­ing on the mat­ter. 

If the ap­peal is dis­missed and the group does not mount a fi­nal chal­lenge to the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil, it would mean that the sub­stan­tive case will have to go to tri­al. 

The group is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan, and Natasha Bis­ram. 

About the Naipaul-Cool­man case

For­mer Xtra Food chief ex­ec­u­tive Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man was ab­duct­ed from her Ch­agua­nas home on De­cem­ber 19, 2006. 

A $122,000 ran­som was paid by her fam­i­ly but she was not re­leased and her body was nev­er found.

Sher­von and De­von Pe­ters, their broth­er An­tho­ny Gloster, Joel Fras­er, Ronald Arm­strong, broth­ers Kei­da and Jameel Gar­cia, Mar­lon Trim­ming­ham, his broth­er Earl, Lyn­don Charles, Al­lan “Scan­ny” Mar­tin and An­to­nio Charles were even­tu­al­ly charged with the crime.

Dur­ing the tri­al be­fore for­mer High Court Judge and cur­rent Ap­pel­late Judge Mal­colm Holdip and a 12-mem­ber ju­ry, State pros­e­cu­tors con­tend­ed that the Naipaul-Cool­man was held cap­tive in a house in Up­per La Puer­ta, Diego Mar­tin, be­fore she was killed and dis­mem­bered.

Through­out the tri­al, de­fence at­tor­neys point­ed out mul­ti­ple in­con­sis­ten­cies in the ev­i­dence. 

They ques­tioned the men­tal health of the State’s main wit­ness Keon Gloster, who claimed that he was co­erced by po­lice in­to im­pli­cat­ing the ac­cused men. They al­so con­tend­ed that a gun linked to the kid­nap­ping crime scene was plant­ed in one of the ac­cused men’s homes.

When the tri­al was at an ad­vanced stage, Mar­tin and two fel­low pris­on­ers at the Port-of-Spain State Prison staged a dar­ing es­cape dur­ing which a po­lice of­fi­cer was mur­dered. Mar­tin was shot and killed by po­lice in a shoot-out at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. 

Fras­er was freed be­fore the ju­ry con­sid­ered the case as Jus­tice Holdip up­held a no-case sub­mis­sion al­leg­ing that there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence link­ing him to the crime. 

The tri­al end­ed in 2016 with the ju­ry ac­quit­ting eight of the men and or­der­ing a re­tri­al for Earl Trim­ming­ham and Lyn­don Charles.