Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer will not face a re­tri­al for al­leged­ly re­ceiv­ing a $1,500 bribe al­most two decades ago, af­ter the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil dis­missed a fi­nal ap­peal by the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

In its rul­ing, the Law Lords up­held the lo­cal Court of Ap­peal’s 2021 de­ci­sion to stay the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of re­tired of­fi­cer Nawaz Ali, cit­ing an “un­rea­son­able” 15-year de­lay in bring­ing the mat­ter to con­clu­sion.

Ali was charged in ear­ly 2006 with three counts of cor­rup­tion, ac­cused of so­lic­it­ing a $6,000 bribe from a man to avoid pros­e­cut­ing him for re­ceiv­ing a stolen car. Pros­e­cu­tors al­leged he re­ceived $4,500 in an ini­tial pay­ment, fol­lowed by $1,500 dur­ing a sting op­er­a­tion arranged by the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACIB). Ali was ar­rest­ed af­ter al­leged­ly be­ing found with an en­ve­lope of marked bills.

At his first tri­al in 2010, a nine-mem­ber ju­ry ac­quit­ted him of so­lic­it­ing the bribe and re­ceiv­ing the first pay­ment but con­vict­ed him of re­ceiv­ing the sec­ond. Months lat­er, the Court of Ap­peal over­turned the con­vic­tion, cit­ing the ju­ry’s in­con­sis­tent ver­dicts on charges it deemed “in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked.”

When the re­tri­al came be­fore then-High Court judge and now Ap­pel­late judge Gillian Lucky in 2018, Ali’s le­gal team sought a stay, ar­gu­ing is­sues from the first tri­al ren­dered the case un­fair. Jus­tice Lucky barred pros­e­cu­tors from us­ing ev­i­dence re­lat­ed to the ac­quit­ted charges, but the DPP ap­pealed.

In 2021, the Ap­peal Court found Lucky was wrong to ex­clude the ev­i­dence but still stayed the case, not­ing de­fects in the charge, the lack of ex­pla­na­tion for the in­con­sis­tent ver­dicts, and the pro­longed de­lay in res­o­lu­tion.

Writ­ing for the Privy Coun­cil, Sir An­drew Edis dis­agreed with the Ap­peal Court’s crit­i­cism of the re­main­ing charge, say­ing it could have been fair­ly tried. How­ev­er, he agreed that the ex­ces­sive de­lay—caused not on­ly by pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al in­ac­tion but al­so by ju­di­cial mis­steps and fail­ures to list hear­ings in a time­ly man­ner—jus­ti­fied end­ing the pros­e­cu­tion.

“In ad­di­tion to these ju­di­cial fail­ures, the courts failed to list the re-tri­al with­in a rea­son­able time of the or­der for a re­tri­al and then failed to list the ap­peal with­in a rea­son­able time of the de­ci­sion… to stay the pro­ceed­ings,” Edis said.

He not­ed that the out­come does not shield Ali, who re­tired while the case was pend­ing, from pos­si­ble dis­ci­pli­nary or civ­il ac­tion.

“The out­come of these crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings will be of no as­sis­tance to Mr Ali in any dis­ci­pli­nary or civ­il pro­ceed­ings,” Edis stat­ed.

The DPP’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Pe­ter Knox, KC.