PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher

@guardian.co.tt

The case against for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and for­mer Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen for al­leged le­gal fee kick­back fees has been de­layed once again.

Fol­low­ing a sta­tus hear­ing be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court yes­ter­day, the mat­ter was once again ad­journed this time to April 28, as the State once again re­quired more time to dis­close wit­ness state­ments.

De­fence At­tor­ney for Ram­lo­gan Se­nior Coun­sel Pamela El­der raised con­cerns about the State’s ap­proach to the case, as she not­ed re­quests were made since Sep­tem­ber.

“I’m a bit dis­ap­point­ed about the pas­sage of time, the length of time it has tak­en. We made the re­quest in Sep­tem­ber. It is now Jan­u­ary,” said El­der

She al­so took ob­jec­tion to the man­ner in which the State went about se­cur­ing cer­tain el­e­ments of the ev­i­dence ar­gu­ing that the pros­e­cu­tion’s at­tempt to ob­tain search war­rants for ev­i­dence may have breached the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act.

She ar­gued that the ap­proach “made a mock­ery of our sys­tem of jus­tice” and the she has ‘giv­en se­ri­ous thought to the con­sti­tu­tion­al im­pli­ca­tions” of the state’s ac­tions.

Ramdeen’s at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge al­so had con­cerns about the State’s fail­ure to pro­vide QC Vin­cent Nel­son’s wit­ness state­ment.

The Chief Mag­is­trate or­dered the State to pro­vide the wit­ness state­ment by Fri­day or face sanc­tions from the court.

Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle said she was not pleased with the lack of progress in the mat­ter af­ter she learned of the lat­est se­ries of de­lays.

Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen were ar­rest­ed in May 2019 fol­low­ing an al­most three-year in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to le­gal fees which were paid to pri­vate le­gal prac­ti­tion­ers rep­re­sent­ing the State and State com­pa­nies in le­gal pro­ceed­in­gs dur­ing Ram­lo­gan’s tenure be­tween 2010 and 2015.

Ramdeen, Ram­lo­gan, and Nel­son are 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.

Nel­son signed a plea agree­ment deal with the DPP’s Of­fice to plead guilty and tes­ti­fy against the duo. Ramdeen and Ram­lo­gan have con­tin­ued to prac­tice as at­tor­neys while the case is pend­ing af­ter be­ing placed on $1.5 mil­li­on bail and $1.2 mil­li­on re­spec­tive­ly.