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Saturday, May 31, 2025

Cops raid Ramlogan, Ramdeen’s homes, offices

Kickback probe on

by

Mark Bassant & Radhica De Silva
2221 days ago
20190501

The far-reach­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the le­gal fees kick­back probe in­volv­ing for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen took of­fi­cers of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACIB) to the men’s homes and law of­fices in South and North Trinidad yes­ter­day evening.

Plain­clothes po­lice of­fi­cers from the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau raid­ed the homes of for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen late yes­ter­day.

The first group of of­fi­cers went to Ram­lo­gan’s Palmiste, San Fer­nan­do home around 5.20 pm.

A woman in blue opened the gate for the at­tor­neys. The of­fi­cers car­ried a brown box and walked in­to the house ac­com­pa­nied by Ram­lo­gan, who ap­peared to have ar­rived with the of­fi­cers. He stood smil­ing while the po­lice en­tered his home. He glanced at the me­dia cam­eras sev­er­al times but did not give any in­ter­views.

An­oth­er group of of­fi­cers al­so went to the apart­ment vil­las at Block Four, Palmiste, a gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty, where they al­so ex­e­cut­ed a raid. It is be­lieved that this con­do­mini­um was the home of at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen. Sources told Guardian Me­dia that of­fi­cers spent close to three hours in Ramdeen’s town­house. Sev­er­al elec­tron­ic de­vices were seized and tak­en away by po­lice.

Of­fi­cers al­so ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at Ramdeen’s south law of­fice where fur­ther items were re­moved. Dur­ing that raid, ACIB of­fi­cers were al­so sent to Ramdeen’s law cham­bers at Cor­ne­lio Street, Wood­brook just af­ter 5 pm. Four of­fi­cers re­mained parked out­side the cham­bers in a heav­i­ly tint­ed Almera mo­tor­car for sev­er­al hours block­ing the dri­ve­way.

Some lawyers were seen ear­li­er en­ter­ing the law cham­bers. One of the lawyers from the cham­ber, who ar­rived to move her Mer­cedes Benz, was briefly spo­ken to by one of the of­fi­cers who iden­ti­fied him­self.

Of­fi­cers who had searched Ramdeen’s home and law cham­bers in south even­tu­al­ly ar­rived at his Wood­brook cham­bers around 8.40 pm. They ar­rived in a con­voy of three ve­hi­cles with Ramdeen in the back seat of a black SUV with an of­fi­cer. How­ev­er, the con­voy drove straight in­to the com­pound and of­fi­cers quick­ly es­cort­ed Ramdeen in­side. Ramdeen’s lawyers al­so went in­side for the search of the premis­es.

Both Ramdeen and Ram­lo­gan are be­ing quizzed in con­nec­tion with the pay­out of hefty sums of le­gal fees dur­ing the term of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment when Ram­lo­gan was the at­tor­ney gen­er­al.

Ram­lo­gan was de­tained at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port by of­fi­cers of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau as he was about to board a flight to Mi­a­mi.

A war­rant was al­so is­sued for Ramdeen’s ar­rest but he sub­se­quent­ly sur­ren­dered to po­lice.

Rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge, Ramdeen spent sev­er­al hours be­ing quizzed by de­tec­tives of the ACB.

Gov­ern­ment has re­port­ed­ly re­tained the ser­vices of Eng­lish Queen’s Coun­sel Ed­ward Jenk­ins to pros­e­cute the case against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen.

For the last few years, in­ves­ti­ga­tors have been look­ing in­to hefty sums of mon­ey paid out by the AG’s of­fice to a “favoured few,” ac­cord­ing to se­nior Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Stu­art Young. Un­der Ram­lo­gan’s tenure, more than $1 bil­li­on was paid to a hand­ful of peo­ple in the le­gal pro­fes­sion. That fig­ure bal­looned from about $40 mil­li­on dur­ing the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Both Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen have pre­vi­ous­ly de­nied any wrong­do­ing. —With re­port­ing by Rishi Ra­goonath


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