Derek Achong

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi has de­clined to com­ment on an al­leged in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment with British Queen’s Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son which was struck be­fore he (Nel­son) agreed to be the State’s main wit­ness in a le­gal fee kick­back case against for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and for­mer op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen. 

Con­tact­ed on Sat­ur­day to re­spond to the doc­u­ment, ex­cerpts of which were shared on so­cial me­dia, Al-Rawi did not de­ny the le­git­i­ma­cy of the doc­u­ment. 

How­ev­er, he de­clined to com­ment on the is­sues con­tained with­in, as he said it re­lates to mat­ters cur­rent­ly be­fore the courts. 

“In the cir­cum­stances it would be un­wise of me to en­gage in a dis­cus­sion of this top­ic in pub­lic, as it would be equal­ly un­wise of you to pub­lish any such dis­cus­sion giv­en that there are pend­ing crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings to which this top­ic may be rel­e­vant,” Al-Rawi said. 

“The sub ju­dice rule ap­plies here to pro­tect the fair­ness of the crim­i­nal process which might be af­fect­ed by un­due pub­lic­i­ty,” he added.    

The agree­ment re­lates to Nel­son pro­vid­ing the Gov­ern­ment with a no­tarised state­ment to be used to ac­quire Nor­wich Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal or­ders through the courts. 

Such or­ders seek to com­pel third par­ties such as fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to re­veal con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion, which can be then used to pur­sue lit­i­ga­tion over al­leged wrong­do­ing. 

In the doc­u­ment, Al-Rawi, as le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Gov­ern­ment, agreed that Nel­son’s state­ment would not be re­leased in­to the pub­lic do­main in­clud­ing through Par­lia­men­tary de­bate.

While it stat­ed that the state­ment would be dis­closed to the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) and the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­gat­ing Bu­reau, it not­ed it would not be dis­closed to pros­e­cut­ing, tax en­force­ment, reg­u­la­to­ry or dis­ci­pli­nary au­thor­i­ties out­side of T&T. 

It al­so promised that no civ­il lit­i­ga­tion to re­coup fees paid to him would be tak­en against him with re­gard to the state­ment. 

Al-Rawi al­so agreed to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions to the DPP’s Of­fice for him not to be pros­e­cut­ed. 

“The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al un­der­takes to rec­om­mend to the DPP, who has the pow­er to de­ter­mine whether any crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings can or will be com­menced against you in re­spect of any of the mat­ters aris­ing out of the no­tarised state­ment, that no crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings be com­menced against you,” it stat­ed. 

The agree­ment al­so sought to in­dem­ni­fy Nel­son from any lit­i­ga­tion over the al­le­ga­tions con­tained in the state­ment, which it ac­knowl­edged may be chal­lenged for defama­tion.

Ad­dress­ing the doc­u­ment in a re­port in an­oth­er news­pa­per on Sun­day, DPP Roger Gas­pard, SC, said he was not privy to any dis­cus­sions re­lat­ed to the doc­u­ment, which was a civ­il not crim­i­nal mat­ter. 

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. 

In March, last year, High Court Judge Mal­colm Holdip up­held the plea agree­ment and is­sued a to­tal of $2.25 mil­lion in fines to Nel­son for his role in the al­leged con­spir­a­cy.

Holdip fined Nel­son $250,000 for al­leged­ly con­spir­ing with Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen, to breach Sec­tion 3 of the Pre­ven­tion of Cor­rup­tion Act, which crim­i­nal­izes cor­rup­tion through bribery. 

He was fined $2 mil­lion for al­leged­ly con­spir­ing with the duo to breach Sec­tion 45 of the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act, which crim­i­nal­izes the con­ceal­ment of the pro­ceeds of crime. 

Un­der his plea agree­ment, the con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mis­be­hav­ior in pub­lic of­fice charge was dropped.

As part of his sen­tence, Jus­tice Holdip said that Nel­son, who had been in pro­tec­tive cus­tody dur­ing his vis­its to Trinidad for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and sen­tenc­ing, was free to re­turn to the Unit­ed King­dom while he cleared the fines un­der a 10-month court-ap­proved pay­ment plan.

He was al­so placed on a $250,000 bond to keep the peace for three years.

Dur­ing a hear­ing of Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen’s case be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle, last Fri­day, Deputy DPP George Bus­by in­di­cat­ed that Ram­lo­gan’s le­gal team did not agree with DPP Roger Gas­pard’s sug­ges­tion that in­dict­ments against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen should be filed di­rect­ly in the High Court in­stead of do­ing so af­ter a pro­tract­ed pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry, which could take sev­er­al months or over a year to com­plete.

The case was ad­journed to No­vem­ber 30, to give the par­ties more time to dis­cuss the is­sue. 

Ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments over le­gal fees paid to pri­vate prac­ti­tion­ers by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al over the past six years, which were laid in Par­lia­ment in ear­ly Ju­ly, Nel­son was paid $10,230,502.96 be­tween 2017 and 2018 and $768,718.50 be­tween 2018 and 2019. 

This was in ad­di­tion to the $40,671,814.26 he re­ceived be­tween 2010 and 2015.