Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The State is set to be­gin the process of en­forc­ing its over US$131.5 mil­lion judg­ment against for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung, busi­ness­man Steve Fer­gu­son and US busi­ness­man Raul Gui­ter­rez Jr in a civ­il as­set re­cov­ery case over al­leged fraud re­lat­ed to the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al and cur­rent Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi an­nounced the plan at a vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day. 

He an­nounced that Mi­a­mi-Dade Cir­cuit Court Judge Reem­ber­to Di­az had ap­proved the fi­nal judg­ment sought by the State, ini­tial­ly ap­proved by a ju­ry in March, af­ter dis­miss­ing a se­ries of last-minute chal­lenges from the trio.

“The monies spent over 20 years of lit­i­ga­tion have now been jus­ti­fied,” Al-Rawi said. 

He ex­plained that the en­force­ment process would en­tail the State’s lawyers ap­ply­ing to the US court for the dis­clo­sure of the trio’s US as­sets. He al­so ex­plained that the three in­di­vid­u­als do not have to pay equal por­tions of the judg­ment sum, as the en­tire com­pen­sa­tion could be tak­en from one de­pend­ing on the cir­cum­stances. 

“It does not have to be split in three. It is up to them how they are go­ing to treat with the civ­il li­a­bil­i­ty amongst them­selves,” Al-Rawi said. 

He al­so not­ed that while the trio sig­nalled their in­ten­tion to ap­peal the judg­ment be­fore Flori­da’s Third Dis­trict Court of Ap­peal, they are yet to make good on their threat. 

“There is no ap­peal as I speak to you now,” Al-Rawi said, as he not­ed there was no im­ped­i­ment to the State go­ing for­ward with its re­cov­ery ef­forts. 

He added that in or­der for them to chal­lenge the judg­ment and stay it pend­ing an ap­peal, they would be re­quired to post a bond to cov­er their en­tire po­ten­tial li­a­bil­i­ty, as well as two years’ in­ter­est cal­cu­lat­ed at US$9 mil­lion per year. 

“The state is go­ing to take every mech­a­nism pos­si­ble to de­fend the judg­ment,” he said. 

In a press re­lease af­ter Al-Rawi’s me­dia con­fer­ence, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ques­tioned the “news­wor­thi­ness” of the up­date pro­vid­ed by him. 

She ac­cused him of us­ing the con­fer­ence as a di­ver­sion from an up­com­ing Privy Coun­cil judg­ment in a law­suit over a move to ex­tend the term of lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives. 

“It is in­ter­est­ing that Al-Rawi is des­per­ate­ly try­ing to dis­tract at­ten­tion from the judg­ment of the Privy Coun­cil which is due to be de­liv­ered on Thurs­day morn­ing,” she said. 

“We can­not help but won­der whether Al-Rawi’s shenani­gans are an at­tempt to cre­ate a di­ver­sion to dis­tract peo­ple’s at­ten­tion away from this his­toric judg­ment.”

The fi­nal judg­ment ob­tained in the Mi­a­mi case is based on the US$32,385,988 in com­pen­sa­tion by the ju­ry, which has to be tripled as the rack­e­teer­ing charges were filed un­der the US’s Rack­e­teer In­flu­enced and Cor­rupt Or­gan­i­sa­tions Act (RI­CO). 

The coun­try al­so suc­cess­ful­ly sought US$38,876,972.89 in pre-judg­ment in­ter­est less US$4,631,691, which was pre­vi­ous­ly paid by the trio in set­tle­ments and resti­tu­tion. 

The US law­suit re­lates to the al­leged in­fla­tion of two con­struc­tion con­tracts and a main­te­nance con­tract for the air­port. 

The US case is sep­a­rate from four lo­cal crim­i­nal cas­es over the air­port project. 

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

The group in­clud­ed busi­ness­man Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh, Kuei Tung; for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Rus­sell Hug­gins; for­mer Nipdec chair­man Ed­ward Bay­ley (now de­ceased); Mar­itime Gen­er­al ex­ec­u­tives John Smith (now de­ceased), 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 in an­oth­er case, com­mon­ly re­ferred to as Pi­ar­co Two. 

The Pi­ar­co Three case per­tained to a £25,000 bribe al­leged­ly re­ceived by for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day and his wife Oma and al­leged­ly paid by Gal­barans­ingh and for­mer Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Car­los John as an al­leged in­duce­ment in re­la­tion to the air­port project. The Pi­ar­co Four case on­ly in­volves Pierre. 

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

The rul­ing meant that the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry in­to the Pi­ar­co Two case had to be restart­ed afresh be­fore a new mag­is­trate along with the Pi­ar­co Three in­quiry, which was al­so be­fore Es­pinet and left in­com­plete up­on her re­tire­ment. The Pi­ar­co Four in­quiry was com­plet­ed with Pierre be­ing com­mit­ted to stand tri­al. 

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. 

In March, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, dis­con­tin­ued the Pi­ar­co Three case against the Pan­days, Gal­barans­ingh and John. 

Gas­pard said his de­ci­sion was based on the low prob­a­bil­i­ty of his of­fice se­cur­ing con­vic­tions in the case. 

Gas­pard sub­se­quent­ly not­ed that he planned to con­tin­ue pros­e­cut­ing the re­main­ing cas­es.