Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment’s civ­il case stem­ming from the Pi­ar­co Air­port cor­rup­tion mat­ter fi­nal­ly moved for­ward in Flori­da yes­ter­day—af­ter 19 years.

This, while at the same time in T&T yes­ter­day, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard with­drew the long­stand­ing Pi­ar­co Air­port 3 cor­rup­tion in­quiry case against for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, his wife Oma, for­mer min­is­ter Car­los John and busi­ness­man Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh.

How­ev­er, in Mi­a­mi yes­ter­day, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Al-Rawi ap­peared as a nom­i­nal rep­re­sen­ta­tive for T&T as the tri­al be­gan on Gov­ern­ment’s 19-year-old civ­il as­set for­fei­ture case stem­ming from the Pi­ar­co cor­rup­tion probe.

De­vel­op­ments took place in the Mi­a­mi 12th Court (Num­ber 2) against de­fen­dants, busi­ness­man Steve Fer­gu­son, for­mer min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung and US busi­ness­man Raul Gutier­rez Jr.

This in­volves the PNM Gov­ern­ment’s long­stand­ing ef­fort to re­coup US$37 mil­lion in the Pi­ar­co cor­rup­tion mat­ter from al­leged rack­e­teer­ing charges filed un­der the US’s Rack­e­teer­ing and In­flu­ence Cor­rup­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion Act (RI­CO).

Fer­gu­son, Kuei Tung and Gutier­rez are the on­ly three de­fen­dants left in Gov­ern­ment’s civ­il case from the orig­i­nal mat­ter filed by the Patrick Man­ning PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2004. The case orig­i­nal­ly in­volved 23 de­fen­dants.

De­fault judg­ment was al­ready en­tered against Kuei Tung.

The civ­il claim rep­re­sents the on­ly tri­al in 19 years where Fer­gu­son and any UNC Cab­i­net mem­bers will face a court in a tri­al - and not a pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry.

The Mi­a­mi case has been de­scribed as the longest run­ning for a ma­jor white-col­lar crime case.

Af­ter it be­gan un­der the Man­ning PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, the cur­rent Dr Kei­th Row­ley Gov­ern­ment ac­cused the past PP ad­min­is­tra­tion of lack of ef­fort on the is­sue. It was at risk of be­ing thrown out as one of the old­est cas­es in the Mi­a­mi courts. Al-Rawi took up the is­sue when the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment en­tered of­fice, pur­su­ing it be­tween 2015-2022.

A tri­al date was ex­pect­ed by May 2022, but the mat­ter was de­layed af­ter Al-Rawi was re­placed as AG by Regi­nald Ar­mour in March 2022.

In April 2022, Kuei Tung’s at­tor­neys sought to dis­qual­i­fy Ar­mour and the Se­quor Law firm rep­re­sent­ing Gov­ern­ment - and strike out the case - since Ar­mour had rep­re­sent­ed Kuei Tung in the crim­i­nal case on the Pi­ar­co mat­ter here in T&T years ago.

Ar­mour and Se­quor Law were dis­qual­i­fied by the Mi­a­mi courts. This was re­in­forced with a Mi­a­mi Ap­peal court ver­dict in Jan­u­ary against Gov­ern­ment’s ap­peal of the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

Gov­ern­ment re­placed Se­quor Law with top New York law firm White and Case.

With Ar­mour dis­qual­i­fied, the mat­ter was re­turned to Al-Rawi - and he con­tin­ued his pres­ence yes­ter­day.

T&T was rep­re­sent­ed yes­ter­day by James Robin­son and Raoul Can­tero from White and Case.

Court in­for­ma­tion in­di­cat­ed the judge gave rul­ings on out­stand­ing mo­tions. The tri­al com­menced with in­ter­views of ju­rors to com­prise the fi­nal pan­el of ju­rors for the ev­i­dence and ar­gu­ments. This will be­gin to­mor­row.

Lawyers Scott Cos­grove and Steven Bin Hack ap­peared for an ab­sent Fer­gu­son. Michael Gar­cia Pe­tit ap­peared for Kuei Tung and Gutier­rez.

The mat­ter is the on­ly oth­er tri­al where T&T has ob­tained re­lief, ex­cept for the plea bar­gain by Ronald Birk in T&T. Most oth­er de­fen­dants plead­ed guilty, set­tled and served jail time.

The Mi­a­mi case is due to con­tin­ue dai­ly un­til con­clu­sion, sched­uled by March 24.

There are ap­prox­i­mate­ly two oth­er mat­ters in the Pi­ar­co Air­port is­sue which T&T’s DPP is yet to de­cide up­on.

State of­fi­cials in T&T mon­i­tor­ing the Mi­a­mi mat­ter not­ed that the civ­il case is a sig­nif­i­cant mat­ter,” ....Af­ter hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars, 19 years of lit­i­ga­tion, the Sec­tion 34 bac­cha­nal, de­lays of the PIs, chal­lenges, com­mis­sions of en­quiry, and yes­ter­day’s dis­con­tin­u­ance of the case against the Pan­days.”

AG Ar­mour didn’t re­spond to queries yes­ter­day.