Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Busi­ness­man Michael St John is su­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) data­base in­cor­rect­ly list­ed him for years as a con­vict­ed drug deal­er, im­pact­ing his rep­u­ta­tion.

St John is the own­er of Tow­er Pro­mo­tion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and D’Di­al Fit­ness. Ac­cord­ing to one of St John’s at­tor­neys, Om Lal­la, the data­base mat­ter should be of con­cern to every cit­i­zen be­cause seem­ing­ly any­one could have il­le­git­i­mate charges to their name, un­der­min­ing their abil­i­ty to ob­tain visas to trav­el abroad or af­fect­ing their liveli­hoods.

St John, al­so rep­re­sent­ed by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, is ac­cus­ing the CoP of in­fring­ing on his hu­man and con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

The busi­ness­man, who sur­vived an as­sas­si­na­tion at­tempt out­side his Long Cir­cu­lar Mall gym in Jan­u­ary 2024 af­ter he was shot in the face, al­leged that in­cor­rect in­for­ma­tion about him was present in the data­base called Ver­sadex.

His at­tor­neys said the in­cor­rect in­for­ma­tion had been present on the data­base for as many as eight years, de­spite nu­mer­ous at­tempts to have the record cor­rect­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the le­gal doc­u­ments, af­ter be­ing de­nied a Unit­ed States green card in 2017 be­cause of ‘cer­tain in­for­ma­tion against him,’ St John be­gan in­ves­ti­gat­ing the case. He was giv­en screen­shots of his pro­file on the TTPS data­base, which list­ed him as be­ing con­vict­ed of drug traf­fick­ing in Au­gust 2002 and a sub­se­quent de­por­tee from the US.

Ac­cord­ing to Lal­la, it is not an iso­lat­ed event, as three oth­er clients al­so had in­cor­rect charges on the TTPS data­base. He did not pro­vide fur­ther ev­i­dence for his claim, say­ing that his clients were con­cerned about be­ing iden­ti­fied and tar­get­ed for speak­ing up.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained a copy of the le­gal doc­u­ments filed elec­tron­i­cal­ly by St John’s le­gal team with the Supreme Court of Jus­tice on Feb­ru­ary 5. St John was grant­ed leave for ju­di­cial re­view on Fri­day af­ter ap­ply­ing on Sep­tem­ber 13. Act­ing CoP Ju­nior Ben­jamin, who re­placed sus­pend­ed CoP Er­la Hare­wood-Cristo­pher, must at­tend a vir­tu­al case man­age­ment con­fer­ence on March 6 or the of­fice will face a de­fault judg­ment.

St John said the in­for­ma­tion was false, as he was nev­er con­vict­ed of drug traf­fick­ing.

“The sec­ond screen­shot in­cor­rect­ly stat­ed, ‘Drug traf­fick­ing, sta­tus con­vict­ed, and Place New York. The fourth screen­shot in­cor­rect­ly stat­ed ‘For­eign of­fence, Of­fence co­caine—sell, sta­tus con­vict­ed and place New York.’

“The sev­enth screen­shot, in­cor­rect­ly stat­ed de­por­ta­tion and 2022 Aug 15. In the body of the doc­u­ment, it states, ‘Known of­fend­er Michael St John was de­port­ed from the US on 9th De­cem­ber 2022 for at­tempt­ing to en­ter the US on 30 March 2022 by us­ing a forged pass­port. Please be ad­vised that all nar­cot­ic charges against the sub­ject were dropped to ex­pe­dite the sub­ject’s de­por­ta­tion on false pass­port charges,” the le­gal doc­u­ment stat­ed.

In April 2024, St John sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to CoP Hare­wood-Cristo­pher, giv­ing her 14 days to re­spond.

“It has af­fect­ed his trad­ing and busi­ness in­ter­ests, which re­quire him to ap­ply for li­cences, reg­u­la­to­ry per­mits, in­sur­ance, and loans for his busi­ness­es. This has posed a sig­nif­i­cant ob­sta­cle to his busi­ness,” Ma­haraj said at a press con­fer­ence in April 2024.

“If this sys­tem con­tin­ues, the TTPS can give you a clean record cer­tifi­cate, a cer­tifi­cate of good record, but on a Ver­sadex sys­tem on a TTPS data­base, you have in­for­ma­tion about your­self which is not true and which could be dis­sem­i­nat­ed to em­bassies, banks, in­sur­ance com­pa­nies, what­ev­er it is, dam­age and de­stroy your rep­u­ta­tion, but the in­for­ma­tion can­not be cor­rect­ed by the TTPS.

“You can go and get sev­er­al cer­tifi­cates of good char­ac­ter and clean records, but you do not know what some­body is record­ing against you,” Ma­haraj said in April about the case.

He is now su­ing the CoP for the fail­ure/re­fusal to ex­er­cise the pow­er and du­ty un­der Sec­tion 36(1) of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act to cor­rect the in­ac­cu­rate per­son­al in­for­ma­tion of the claimant stored in the TTPS data­base, which in­cludes its Versedex data­base.

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 36(1) of the FOIA Act, “Where a doc­u­ment con­tains per­son­al in­for­ma­tion of an in­di­vid­ual and that in­di­vid­ual al­leges that the in­for­ma­tion is in­ac­cu­rate, the pub­lic au­thor­i­ty which holds the doc­u­ment may, on the ap­pli­ca­tion, in writ­ing, of that in­di­vid­ual, cor­rect the in­for­ma­tion.”

St John is seek­ing an or­der com­pelling the CoP to cor­rect the in­ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion in the TTPS data­base with­in sev­en days and a de­c­la­ra­tion that the im­pugned de­ci­sion of the CoP was un­law­ful and is null and void.

The busi­ness­man’s le­gal team said its client is not look­ing for mon­ey but to clear his rep­u­ta­tion.