Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass has scored a ma­jor pre­lim­i­nary le­gal vic­to­ry in her le­gal bat­tle over an on­go­ing Cab­i­net-ap­point­ed probe in­to the de­ba­cle be­tween her of­fice and the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

De­liv­er­ing an oral rul­ing at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, a short while ago, Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed, Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar, and James Aboud up­held Ram­dass’ ap­peal over the pre­ma­ture dis­missal of her ju­di­cial re­view law­suit.

The ap­peal pan­el ruled that High Court Judge West­min James was wrong to have re­fused her leave to pur­sue the case on the ba­sis that she had not raised ar­guable grounds with a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess at an even­tu­al tri­al.

The out­come of the ap­peal means that Ram­dass’ sub­stan­tive case over the le­gal­i­ty of the probe will now have to be heard and de­ter­mined by an­oth­er judge, who is yet to be as­signed.

Af­ter the de­ci­sion was de­liv­ered, Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes, who led the le­gal team for the Cab­i­net, in­di­cat­ed that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert would in­form the in­ves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee led by re­tired judge David Har­ris that the as­pects of the probe deal­ing with Ram­dass and her of­fice had to be put on hold pend­ing the fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion of the case.

The un­der­tak­ing means that the com­mit­tee would def­i­nite­ly be un­able to meet its dead­line for sub­mit­ting its fi­nal re­port in ear­ly Ju­ly.

Based on Mendes’ un­der­tak­ing, Ram­dass’ lawyer Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, in­di­cat­ed that a stay of the probe, which Ram­dass ini­tial­ly sought, was no longer re­quired.

In the ap­peal, Ram­dass’ lawyers led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, are con­tend­ing that High Court West­min James erred in find­ing that Ram­dass did not have an ar­guable case with a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess at an even­tu­al tri­al.

In her sub­stan­tive law­suit, Ram­dass con­tend­ed that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al and il­le­gal be­cause nei­ther Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert nor the Cab­i­net has the ju­ris­dic­tion to probe the con­duct of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.

Her lawyers al­so claimed that Im­bert was bi­ased in ini­ti­at­ing the probe.

The dis­pute be­tween Ram­dass and the min­istry arose in April af­ter the min­istry sought to de­liv­er amend­ed pub­lic ac­counts, which sought to ex­plain a re­port­ed $2.6 bil­lion un­der­es­ti­ma­tion in rev­enue.

Ram­dass ini­tial­ly re­fused re­ceipt as she claimed that she need­ed le­gal ad­vice on whether she could ac­cept them af­ter the Jan­u­ary statu­to­ry dead­line for sub­mis­sion.

Ram­dass even­tu­al­ly ac­cept­ed the records and dis­patched au­dit staff to ver­i­fy them.

She then sub­mit­ted her orig­i­nal an­nu­al re­port to Par­lia­ment, which was based on the orig­i­nal records.

In sub­se­quent le­gal cor­re­spon­dence be­tween the par­ties, Ram­dass claimed that her au­dit team was un­able to rec­on­cile the amend­ed records based on doc­u­ments it au­dit­ed. She al­so con­tend­ed that the amend­ed records ap­peared to be back­dat­ed to the orig­i­nal statu­to­ry dead­line in Jan­u­ary.

Ram­dass al­so took is­sue with the fact that the dis­crep­an­cy was ini­tial­ly es­ti­mat­ed at $3.4 bil­lion.

Im­bert re­peat­ed­ly de­nied any wrong­do­ing.

His lawyers claimed that the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion af­ter the ini­tial es­ti­mate re­vealed that the vari­ance was in fact $2,599,278,188.72, which was at­trib­uted to Val­ue Added Tax (VAT), In­di­vid­ual, Busi­ness Levy and Green Fund Levy con­tri­bu­tions.

They al­so claimed that checks in re­la­tion to the ap­prox­i­mate $780 mil­lion dif­fer­ence be­tween the ini­tial and fi­nal es­ti­mat­ed vari­ances at­trib­uted it to tax re­fund cheques to tax­pay­ers is­sued for the 2022 fi­nan­cial year be­ing cashed in the fi­nan­cial year 2023.

They at­trib­uted the er­ror to a switch from a man­u­al to an elec­tron­ic cheque-clear­ing sys­tem by the Cen­tral Bank.

They claimed that there was no back­dat­ing as they not­ed that the al­le­ga­tion was made be­cause a doc­u­ment re­lat­ed to the orig­i­nal pub­lic ac­counts was in­ad­ver­tent­ly in­clud­ed in the re­vised doc­u­ments.

They al­so con­tend­ed that Ram­dass act­ed il­le­gal­ly in ini­tial­ly re­fus­ing to ac­cept the amend­ed ac­counts.

How­ev­er, they claimed that their client has, for now, de­cid­ed against tak­ing le­gal ac­tion against her for it.

Im­bert even­tu­al­ly agreed to lay the orig­i­nal re­port in Par­lia­ment and did so on May 24.

His de­ci­sion was based on the un­der­stand­ing that Ram­dass would is­sue a spe­cial re­port clar­i­fy­ing her ini­tial re­port based on the amend­ed records pro­vid­ed.

Ram­dass was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Kent Sam­lal, Natasha Bis­ram, and Aasha Ram­lal. Si­mon de la Bastide, SC, Jo-Anne Julien, Jerome Ra­j­coomar, and Son­nel David-Longe are al­so rep­re­sent­ing Im­bert and the Cab­i­net.