Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) plans to in­ves­ti­gate the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour from the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port civ­il mat­ter in a Mi­a­mi court.

Its coun­cil, led by se­nior coun­sel Sophia Chote, SC, met on Tues­day at its Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters for its month­ly statu­to­ry meet­ing, where the mat­ter came up.

Im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the meet­ing, the as­so­ci­a­tion is­sued a press re­lease stat­ing it had not­ed the var­i­ous re­quests for its re­sponse on the is­sue.

These calls come as the furore sur­round­ing the AG con­tin­ues, with nu­mer­ous calls for him to re­sign his po­si­tion af­ter he was dis­qual­i­fied from rep­re­sent­ing this coun­try in the civ­il mat­ter di­rect­ly linked to the Pi­ar­co Air­port fraud case against for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung and oth­ers in Mi­a­mi.

In April, just weeks af­ter Ar­mour was ap­point­ed as AG, Kuei Tung filed a re­quest to have Ar­mour and US law firm Se­quor Law dis­qual­i­fied from the civ­il mat­ter against him.

Kuei Tung claimed that Ar­mour could have shared sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion he (Ar­mour) gleaned from rep­re­sent­ing him (Kuei Tung) and his then-girl­friend in the Pi­ar­co Air­port pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry in T&T be­tween 2003 and 2008.

Ar­mour’s af­fi­davit filed in re­sponse claimed he was a ju­nior at­tor­ney at the time and his role was lim­it­ed to note-tak­ing.

How­ev­er, me­dia re­ports and court tran­scripts seem to con­flict with his state­ment and the calls for his res­ig­na­tion have been pour­ing in since.

Yes­ter­day, the LATT said it con­sid­ers this mat­ter an im­por­tant one war­rant­i­ng com­ment un­der the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion Act, Chap­ter 90:03.

But the as­so­ci­a­tion said to do so, it need­ed to ver­i­fy the facts.

“We are re­quest­ing cer­ti­fied copies of the Court pro­ceed­ings, in­clud­ing the af­fi­davit and tran­scripts, which we will then re­view,” the state­ment said.

Once this is done, the as­so­ci­a­tion said it will seek a re­sponse from Ar­mour be­fore mak­ing a pub­lic pro­nounce­ment.

“The coun­cil al­so in­tends to re­view any ap­peal filed against the Or­der of the Mi­a­mi-Dade Court to de­ter­mine whether any mat­ters on ap­peal are rel­e­vant to the is­sues on which it pro­pos­es to of­fer a state­ment,” the LATT said.

In his last pub­lic state­ment on June 8, Ar­mour vowed to main­tain his si­lence un­til the ap­peal is com­plet­ed in Mi­a­mi.

The as­so­ci­a­tion’s state­ment comes hours af­ter Guardian Me­dia re­ceived con­fir­ma­tion that a group of at­tor­neys in­tend­ed to file a req­ui­si­tion re­quest­ing a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing of the LATT to deal with the is­sue.

The req­ui­si­tion, which is ex­pect­ed to be hand-de­liv­ered to the as­so­ci­a­tion in the com­ing days, was mak­ing the rounds yes­ter­day, as sev­er­al at­tor­neys con­firmed they were con­tact­ed and asked whether they would sup­port it.

It asks the as­so­ci­a­tion to de­bate and vote on a mo­tion of no-con­fi­dence against Ar­mour.Once the req­ui­si­tion re­ceives the sig­na­tures of 25 at­tor­neys and is hand­ed over to the LATT, the coun­cil will have 30 days to call a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing.

It will not be the first such mo­tion Ar­mour has faced since news of his dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion was made pub­lic, as the Op­po­si­tion UNC has filed mo­tions of no-con­fi­dence in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate.

Yes­ter­day, the Of­fice of the AG an­nounced Ar­mour had left the coun­try on of­fi­cial busi­ness. Stu­art Young will act as AG un­til Ar­mour re­turns to­mor­row.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to Young seek­ing his re­sponse to claims Ar­mour was sum­moned to the US by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who re­mained in the US af­ter the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as end­ed this week for med­ical treat­ment.

Young rub­bished this, how­ev­er, say­ing Ar­mour was on pre­vi­ous­ly sched­uled “of­fi­cial and im­por­tant Gov­ern­ment busi­ness.”

“The spec­u­la­tion sur­round­ing his car­ry­ing out of­fi­cial busi­ness out­side of the coun­try is un­war­rant­ed. The mis­chief be­ing fu­elled by those who are at­tempt­ing to se­cure their own well-be­ing is in­ter­est­ing and should be care­ful­ly not­ed by the civic-mind­ed pub­lic,” Young said.

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