AKASH SAMA­ROO

"What did you ex­pect the State to do in the face of in­for­ma­tion?"

That was the re­sponse by for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and cur­rent Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Faris Al-Rawi MP, as he de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion to en­ter in­to an in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment with King's Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son in a mat­ter in­volv­ing al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in­volv­ing for­mer AG Anand Ram­lo­gan and for­mer UNC Sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen.

On Oc­to­ber 10, the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions de­cid­ed to dis­con­tin­ue the crim­i­nal charges against the men.

This was due to the un­will­ing­ness of the State’s main wit­ness, King’s Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son, to tes­ti­fy against the two, be­fore his law­suit over the al­leged breach of an agree­ment with Al-Rawi is set­tled.

As At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in 2017, Al-Rawi en­tered in­to an in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment with Nel­son KC, in or­der to se­cure him as a wit­ness in the mat­ter.

At a news con­fer­ence to­day, Al-Rawi was asked if in ret­ro­spect, the Of­fice of the AG's of­fer of the in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment com­pro­mised the case. He re­spond­ed:

"The sim­ple fact is some­body came for­ward and said they stole mon­ey from the Gov­ern­ment, and they point­ed fin­gers at two oth­er peo­ple who stole mon­ey as well, Mr Ram­lo­gan and Mr Ramdeen. Per­haps I should re­turn the ques­tion and ask, what did you ex­pect the State to do?"

Con­cerns have been raised in the pub­lic do­main that mil­lions in tax­pay­er dol­lars have now been wast­ed as the case has fall­en apart. This was al­so put for­ward to the for­mer AG.

"Let's look at CLI­CO, Life­s­port, the Pi­ar­co Air­port, there seems to be a choice, do some­thing or do noth­ing.  When you're an of­fice hold­er, you are oblig­ed to take ad­vice, and I cer­tain­ly did that,” the for­mer AG point­ed out.  “

The State has an oblig­a­tion to act when you're faced with a writ­ten con­fes­sion, that is cost­ly," he added.

Al-Rawi said the DPP has in­di­cat­ed that he may pick up the mat­ter in the fu­ture once Nel­son's lit­i­ga­tion against the State comes to an end and there­fore, he said there is not much in­for­ma­tion that he can re­veal at this time.

He ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion Leader of at­tempt­ing to get Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen off by flood­ing the pub­lic do­main with in­for­ma­tion that could lead to a mis­tri­al.