Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter/ Pro­duc­er

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

“Hec­tic and scary.”

Those were the two words used by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie to de­scribe his first days in of­fice yes­ter­day, as he claimed the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion for le­gal fees for this fis­cal year has al­ready been spent out by the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He said his min­istry is al­so look­ing at a debt of $70 mil­lion.

“The first day I walked in, my Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary walked to me with cer­tain doc­u­ments. In those doc­u­ments, she pro­vid­ed me with the fees vote. That’s on my first day, last week, Fri­day. In that vote, I had ze­ro dol­lars and ze­ro cents, not even 10 cents,” Je­re­mie told Guardian Me­dia.

He ex­plained that the “vote” is mon­ey that Par­lia­ment gives to min­istries for cer­tain pur­pos­es.

Je­re­mie added, “I am dis­tressed at the lev­el of spend­ing and the man­ner in which pub­lic funds have been spent on out­side le­gal ser­vices.”

The AG said he is tak­ing this very se­ri­ous­ly and has al­ready spo­ken with the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) about how he in­tends to han­dle the mat­ter.

“I raised that ques­tion di­rect­ly with them (LATT), the ap­proach­es which I pro­posed to take with re­spect to that mat­ter,” he ex­plained.

The is­sue of high le­gal fees was raised by Je­re­mie when he was sworn in at Pres­i­dent’s House last week. Yes­ter­day, he re­it­er­at­ed, “I do not think that a sys­tem that al­lows for the se­lec­tive em­ploy­ment of a few at­tor­neys with no over­sight, ei­ther in terms of who is se­lect­ed or how much mon­ey is paid, is to the ben­e­fit of the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Je­re­mie said by his cal­cu­la­tions the out­go­ing PNM gov­ern­ment spent over $1 bil­lion in less than two terms. He said some pay­ments are still owed to at­tor­neys.

“I have req­ui­si­tions from at­tor­neys and oth­ers which I am cer­tain, I have not done the math, let’s give it a nice round fig­ure, it is no less than $70 mil­lion. So, I have ze­ro dol­lars in the vote be­cause every cent has been spent, but I have req­ui­si­tions.”

Je­re­mie said dur­ing his for­mer stints as AG, he was able to con­duct “big-tick­et” work at a frac­tion of what is be­ing paid cur­rent­ly.

“This is an is­sue that needs to be ad­dressed,” he said in ref­er­ence to cur­rent cir­cum­stances.

In the “De­tails of Es­ti­mates of Re­cur­rent Ex­pen­di­ture for the Fi­nan­cial Year 2025,” there was an al­lo­ca­tion of $80 mil­lion for “fees” un­der Goods and Ser­vices.

Last fis­cal year (2024), the state al­so spent close to $158 mil­lion in le­gal fees. Ini­tial­ly, $40 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed but an ad­di­tion­al $120 mil­lion was re­quest­ed in sup­ple­men­tal funds.

At­tempts to reach the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion’s at­tor­neys gen­er­al over its two terms, Faris Al-Rawi, Regi­nald Ar­mour and Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee stage dur­ing the last bud­get de­bate on Oc­to­ber 16, 2024, when Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein called the $158 mil­lion spend one of the sin­gle high­est in a fi­nan­cial year, then-en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young re­spond­ed, “In a five-year pe­ri­od, a UNC AG spent over $1 bil­lion in fees and there is a fol­low the mon­ey trail I’m sure in­to where some of those fees went.”

Mean­while, Je­re­mie al­so said he has had to spend his first few days in of­fice deal­ing with out­stand­ing mat­ters left by for­mer AG Robin­son-Reg­is.

“I can’t dis­cuss that at this time, but I will. What I would say is that there is a lot that has not been done and I’m choos­ing my words very care­ful­ly. A lot that has not been done, which ought to have been done. That’s all that I can say. I’m up against some very dif­fi­cult time­lines and there’s quite a lot that was left un­at­tend­ed. That’s all I’ll say at this time.”

Je­re­mie added, “There are mat­ters which were be­fore the Par­lia­ment and those mat­ters lapsed. There were mat­ters which had been ap­proved by the Cab­i­net as well, reg­u­la­tions and leg­isla­tive ac­tion, which the new Gov­ern­ment will have to take a look at again and I am in the process of just putting those things be­fore the cab­i­net.”

He said those mat­ters range from bank liq­uid­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty to oth­er mat­ters of more im­por­tance which he said he did not wish to dis­cuss.

Je­re­mie said an­oth­er key fo­cus at this time is as­sist­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo with the up­com­ing mid-year bud­get re­view. Tan­coo had pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that the mid-year re­view may come in June.

Je­re­mie al­so re­it­er­at­ed that the “Stand Your Ground” leg­is­la­tion, a main cam­paign promise of the UNC, will be on the par­lia­ment’s floor some­time this year.

On­ly yes­ter­day, the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Cab­i­net was ful­ly ap­point­ed with the swear­ing-in of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj and an­oth­er Min­is­ter in the Hous­ing Min­istry, Phillip Alexan­der.