RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly is call­ing on the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to make firm rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the court that the on­go­ing Vin­cent Nel­son in­dem­ni­ty court pro­ceed­ings be made pub­lic.

“One of the foun­da­tion pil­lars of our jus­tice sys­tem is that ju­di­cial pro­ceed­ings are open to scruti­ny from the pub­lic. This is to en­sure trans­paren­cy, and ac­count­abil­i­ty from all par­ties in­volved as well as to en­gen­der trust and con­fi­dence in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice,” Ram­bal­ly said.

“I re­mind AG (Regi­nald) Ar­mour that this mat­ter in­volves the se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tion that Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials may have in­duced a wit­ness to give ev­i­dence to pros­e­cute po­lit­i­cal ri­vals. It is there­fore in the in­ter­ests of all cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go to be able to scru­ti­nise the de­tails of these pro­ceed­ings and ar­rive at their own con­clu­sion,” he added.

Ram­bal­ly in­di­cat­ed that while there may have been jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for “seal­ing these pro­ceed­ings be­cause there once ex­ist­ed a crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion and prej­u­di­cial pre-tri­al pub­lic­i­ty may have been con­sid­ered, now that such pros­e­cu­tion has col­lapsed, there is no good rea­son to main­tain such se­cre­cy”.

He added, “What is in the dark in our democ­ra­cy must be brought in­to the light.”

On Thurs­day, the tri­al of King’s Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son’s mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar law­suit over the Gov­ern­ment’s al­leged breach of an in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment re­lat­ed to his role as the State’s main wit­ness in the now-dis­con­tin­ued cor­rup­tion case against for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen com­menced.

The tri­al start­ed be­fore High Court Judge Jacque­line Wil­son at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre and mem­bers of the me­dia were not per­mit­ted to at­tend as it is be­ing held in-cam­era.

When the case was first filed by Nel­son, his then at­tor­ney ap­plied for it to be sealed. Nel­son sub­se­quent­ly changed his le­gal team and sought to re­verse the pub­lic­i­ty bar on the case as he claimed he had nev­er in­struct­ed that it be sealed.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice re­sist­ed the move as it claimed there is an over­lap be­tween the civ­il case and the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against the duo which may be re­in­sti­tut­ed by Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard af­ter the civ­il case is de­ter­mined.

Jus­tice Wil­son even­tu­al­ly agreed to leave the case sealed.

In 2019, Ram­lo­gan, Ramdeen, and Nel­son were charged over an al­leged le­gal fee kick­back scheme. They were joint­ly ac­cused of con­spir­ing to­geth­er to re­ceive, con­ceal and trans­fer crim­i­nal prop­er­ty name­ly the re­wards giv­en to Ram­lo­gan by Nel­son for be­ing ap­point­ed to rep­re­sent the State in sev­er­al cas­es; con­spir­ing to cor­rupt­ly give Ram­lo­gan a per­cent­age of the funds and con­spir­ing to make Ram­lo­gan mis­be­have in pub­lic of­fice by re­ceiv­ing the funds.

Short­ly af­ter be­ing charged, Nel­son en­tered in­to a plea agree­ment with the DPP’s Of­fice in ex­change for his tes­ti­mo­ny against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen.

In March 2020, High Court Judge Mal­colm Holdip up­held the plea agree­ment and is­sued a to­tal of $2.25 mil­lion in fines to Nel­son for his role in the al­leged con­spir­a­cy.

Un­der his plea agree­ment, the con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice charge was dropped and he was fined for the oth­er two of­fences.

In 2022, Nel­son filed a law­suit seek­ing al­most $100 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion for al­leged mul­ti­ple breach­es of the agree­ment with the State.

Un­der the agree­ment, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al and cur­rent Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi, as le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Gov­ern­ment, agreed that Nel­son’s state­ment, which was used to ini­ti­ate the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the duo, would not be re­leased in­to the pub­lic do­main, in­clud­ing through par­lia­men­tary de­bate.

While it stat­ed that the state­ment would be dis­closed to the Of­fice of the DPP and the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau (ACIB), it not­ed it would not be dis­closed to pros­e­cut­ing, tax en­force­ment, reg­u­la­to­ry or dis­ci­pli­nary au­thor­i­ties out­side of T&T. It al­so promised that no civ­il lit­i­ga­tion to re­coup fees paid to him would be tak­en against him about the state­ment.

Al-Rawi agreed to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions to the DPP’s Of­fice for him not to be pros­e­cut­ed. The agree­ment al­so sought to in­dem­ni­fy Nel­son from any lit­i­ga­tion over the al­le­ga­tions con­tained in the state­ment, which it ac­knowl­edged may be chal­lenged for defama­tion.

Nel­son al­leged that Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Stu­art Young breached the agree­ment by pro­vid­ing it to the Unit­ed King­dom’s Na­tion­al Crime Agency (NCA). At the time, Young ad­mit­ted that he did sup­ply the state­ment to the NCA but de­nied any wrong­do­ing.

Al-Rawi al­so de­nied any wrong­do­ing with the in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment as he claimed it was done on the ad­vice of Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes and Gilbert Pe­ter­son who were ini­tial­ly re­tained to de­fend Nel­son’s civ­il law­suit but were even­tu­al­ly re­placed.