DEREK ACHONG

Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, has dis­con­tin­ued the pro­tract­ed pros­e­cu­tion of for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, his wife Oma, for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Car­los John and busi­ness­man Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh for cor­rup­tion re­lat­ed to the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Gas­pard an­nounced his de­ci­sion dur­ing a hear­ing be­fore Mag­is­trate Adia Mo­hammed, a short while ago.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that be­fore to­day's hear­ing, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the group, in­clud­ing the Pan­days' le­gal team of at­tor­neys Justin Phelps and Chase Pe­gus wrote to Gas­pard call­ing on him to pro­vide rea­sons for con­tin­u­ing to pros­e­cute the case.

When Gas­pard ap­peared in court this morn­ing, he ex­plained that his de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue the case was based on his of­fice's low chances of se­cur­ing con­vic­tions.

Gas­pard point­ed to the fact that key wit­ness­es are no longer avail­able as some have died and oth­ers have moved abroad.

He al­so ad­mit­ted that the ac­cused per­sons would have a fair chance of con­vinc­ing the court that they were prej­u­diced in the case.

The case against the group was one of four, re­lat­ed to the air­port project, that were ini­ti­at­ed fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Cana­di­an foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tor Robert Lindquist.

In the first case, com­mon­ly re­ferred to as Pi­ar­co 1, a group of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and busi­ness­peo­ple was charged with of­fences re­lat­ed to the al­leged theft of $19 mil­lion.

The group in­clud­ed Gal­barans­ingh, for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung; for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Rus­sell Hug­gins; for­mer Nipdec chair­man Ed­ward Bay­ley (now de­ceased); Mar­itime Gen­er­al ex­ec­u­tives John Smith (now de­ceased), Steve Fer­gu­son, and Bar­bara Gomes; North­ern Con­struc­tion Fi­nan­cial Di­rec­tor Am­rith Ma­haraj; and Kuei Tung's then com­pan­ion Re­nee Pierre.

Some of the group and oth­er pub­lic of­fi­cials were al­so slapped with sep­a­rate charges over an al­leged broad­er con­spir­a­cy to steal US$200 mil­lion in an­oth­er case, com­mon­ly re­ferred to as Pi­ar­co 2.

The Pi­ar­co 3 case per­tained to a £$25,000 bribe al­leged­ly re­ceived by Pan­day and his wife and al­leged­ly paid by John and Gal­barans­ingh, while Pi­ar­co 4 in­volves Pierre.

In 2019, a High Court Judge up­held a le­gal chal­lenge over the Pi­ar­co 2 case af­ter for­mer se­nior mag­is­trate Ejen­ny Es­pinet re­tired with the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry al­most com­plete.

The rul­ing meant that the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry in­to the Pi­ar­co 2 case had to be restart­ed afresh be­fore a new mag­is­trate along with the Pi­ar­co 3 in­quiry, which was al­so be­fore Es­pinet and left in­com­plete up­on her re­tire­ment.

The Pi­ar­co 4 is al­so yet to be com­plet­ed.

In June, last year, the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil up­held an ap­peal from some of the ac­cused in the Pi­ar­co 1 case over the de­ci­sion of for­mer chief mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc­Ni­colls to com­mit them to stand tri­al for the charges.

The Privy Coun­cil ruled that Mc­Ni­cholls should have up­held their ap­pli­ca­tion for him to re­cuse him­self from the case as he was "hope­less­ly com­pro­mised" based on a then-pend­ing land deal with Cli­co and the in­volve­ment of for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, SC, in help­ing him re­solve it.

The Privy Coun­cil said: "Giv­en that every­thing was hap­pen­ing in the full flare of pub­lic­i­ty his mind must have been in tur­moil."

"It is not dif­fi­cult to imag­ine his grat­i­tude. He has the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to thank for re­solv­ing his se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial prob­lems and for shut­ting down an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to his rep­re­hen­si­ble con­duct," it added.

Fol­low­ing the out­come of the case, DPP Gas­pard is­sued a press re­lease in which he not­ed that the in­quiry had to be ei­ther restart­ed or the ac­cused per­sons had to agree that in­dict­ments against them could be filed in the High Court with­out go­ing through the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry process.

Gas­pard not­ed that he would on­ly make a de­ci­sion on whether it should be restart­ed af­ter con­sid­er­ing pub­lic in­ter­est fac­tors in­clud­ing the age of the case, the costs in­curred by the State thus far, and the need to demon­strate the State's com­mit­ment to pros­e­cut­ing al­leged acts of fraud on the cit­i­zen­ry.

He al­so sug­gest­ed a joint tri­al of all the al­le­ga­tions aris­ing out of the four Pi­ar­co cas­es would be de­sir­able.

"It has been my pub­lic po­si­tion that tak­ing Pi­ar­co 1 to tri­al would have been op­pres­sive if not legal­ly net­tle­some while the oth­er mat­ters re­lat­ed to the air­port project were in train, bear­ing in mind that there were com­mon ac­cused in both sets of mat­ters," he said.