The Fi­nance Min­istry has al­lo­cat­ed cer­tain le­gal fund­ing be­cause it ap­pears to be a tar­get of “UNC mem­bers” and has to deal with a bar­rage of lit­i­ga­tion flow­ing from them.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert in­di­cat­ed this in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee ex­am­i­na­tion of the Fi­nance Min­istry’s $7.9 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion in the 2023 Bud­get.

Fund­ing in­clud­ed $135 mil­lion for 2022, for con­sul­tants to pro­vide an­a­lyt­i­cal ser­vices (for dif­fer­ent ar­eas) and $122.6 mil­lion of this was paid al­ready. There’s al­so fund­ing for le­gal fees for 2023.

Op­po­si­tion MP Sad­dam Ho­sein asked how much le­gal fees would have to be paid for the re­cent spot­light mat­ter in­volv­ing for­mer Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board act­ing com­mis­sion­er Ro­hi­ni Ramkissoon. Im­bert lost that mat­ter in court on Tues­day.

Im­bert said he didn’t know (about fees), as it will be ap­pealed and maybe they may not have to pay any­thing. Ho­sein said fees would have to be paid to lawyers whether the min­istry wins or not.

Im­bert added, “If the MP has an in­ter­est in that mat­ter, de­clare your hand now. How do you know the min­istry will be re­quired to pay le­gal fees - how do you know? Are you one of the at­tor­neys in the mat­ter?”

Op­po­si­tion MP Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo (Oropouche West) asked about the min­istry’s le­gal fund­ing — which in­clud­ed a $45.5 mil­lion sum — and whether any was for any le­gal ac­tion against the min­is­ter or min­istry.

Im­bert said, “The Min­istry of Fi­nance ap­pears to be a tar­get of mem­bers op­po­site (UNC), so we’re get­ting all sorts of Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion (FOI) re­quests and then pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters, then ap­pli­ca­tions for ju­di­cial re­view, then con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tions.

“These come against the Fi­nance Min­istry, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. Some­times they come against of­fi­cials of the Fi­nance Min­istry and there­fore, this pro­vi­sion is to deal with this bar­rage of lit­i­ga­tion flow­ing from Mem­bers op­po­site.”

Ho­sein re­spond­ed, “If the Min­is­ter sim­ply pro­vid­ed the in­for­ma­tion we ask and some of the FOI re­quests, the Min­is­ter wouldn’t have to be met with lit­i­ga­tion and he could save the State some mon­ey and he wouldn’t have to pay the trough of their se­lect­ed at­tor­neys mon­ey in fees. All the Min­is­ter has to do re­al­ly is pro­vide the in­for­ma­tion and be trans­par­ent with the tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.”

Im­bert re­spond­ed, “There are so many friv­o­lous re­quests for FOIs. For ex­am­ple, we had one the oth­er day where an in­di­vid­ual want­ed to see the cheque stub from a tax re­fund cheque even though he was in re­ceipt of the ac­tu­al cheque it­self and he al­so had the cheque stub.

“But we had to hire lawyers to deal with that. And then the in­di­vid­ual want­ed us to pay him his le­gal fees of $2,000. He end­ed up with­draw­ing the mat­ter be­cause I think he re­alised how friv­o­lous it was. That’s one of the friv­o­lous mat­ters we have to deal with on a dai­ly ba­sis.”

Im­bert added, “So each FOI ap­pli­ca­tion must be treat­ed on its mer­it. Not every ap­pli­ca­tion is se­ri­ous or sin­cere. Some of them are friv­o­lous and some of them are ma­li­cious and there­fore we need to hire lawyers to sift through a bar­rage of re­quests that we get, to see which ones need to be re­spond­ed to, which ones are ex­empt, which are ma­li­cious, which ones triv­ial and which ones are pre-cur­sors to lit­i­ga­tion, be­cause this has now be­come an in­dus­try by mem­bers op­po­site, where they’re try­ing to earn le­gal fees with this bar­rage of FOI ap­pli­ca­tions.”

Ho­sein, say­ing that was false, asked Im­bert to with­draw the state­ment.

Im­bert said, “I ent with­draw­ing nut­ting.”