Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

At­tor­ney Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, al­leged­ly of­fered an apol­o­gy to Vin­cent Nel­son, KC, for "ask­ing for a kick­back," say­ing the mon­ey he was earn­ing as at­tor­ney gen­er­al at that time was "very small" and he need­ed to "sup­ple­ment the salary to sur­vive fi­nan­cial­ly."

The con­ver­sa­tion al­leged­ly oc­curred dur­ing a car ride to Nel­son's home in Ja­maica. This rev­e­la­tion was in po­lice state­ments that Nel­son gave to of­fi­cers of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau (ACIB) in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary 2019 while in Bar­ba­dos and in April and May 2019 while in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

These state­ments, ex­clu­sive­ly ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian, were ad­mit­ted in­to ev­i­dence in the Mag­is­trate's Court and al­so dis­closed to the de­fence team of Ram­lo­gan and at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen, a for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress sen­a­tor, who had been ac­cused of cor­rup­tion in a le­gal fee kick­back scheme. The at­tor­neys had de­nied wrong­do­ing and plead­ed not guilty to the charges against them be­fore the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) dis­con­tin­ued the case against them re­cent­ly. The DPP re­vealed that his de­ci­sion was based on the re­fusal of Nel­son, the State's main wit­ness, to tes­ti­fy against the duo un­til the com­ple­tion of a civ­il claim against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (AG) for al­leged­ly breach­ing an in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment he signed.

Nel­son, in his state­ments, said be­tween 2010 and 2015, he vis­it­ed T&T for work on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions and had "many meet­ings" with Ram­lo­gan but would not have re­called the pre­cise con­tents of every meet­ing. He did say, how­ev­er, that these meet­ings took place "in re­la­tion to the le­gal cas­es in which I had been in­struct­ed to act on be­half of GORTT." These meet­ings, he stat­ed, "did not in­clude any dis­cus­sion in re­la­tion to kick­backs."

But Nel­son said he re­called with clar­i­ty at least four oth­er meet­ings.

Ac­cord­ing to a hand­writ­ten state­ment tak­en on April 30, 2019, and filed in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court, Nel­son gave in­ti­mate de­tails of these meet­ings.

He said, "The first meet­ing was in Oc­to­ber 2010. I do not re­call the pre­cise date. It was held in Ram­lo­gan's of­fice in the AG's Cham­bers in Port-of-Spain. He and I were the on­ly two peo­ple present. Dur­ing the meet­ing, he ex­plained that he had con­duct­ed due dili­gence on me and want­ed to in­struct me to work on a num­ber of GORTT in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to state en­ter­pris­es, to as­sess whether there had been cor­rup­tion by the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment, and to ad­vise what ac­tion was to be tak­en. He al­so in­formed me that Ger­ald Ramdeen ('Ramdeen') would al­so be work­ing on these in­ves­ti­ga­tions. I un­der­stood from him that the in­ves­ti­ga­tions had al­ready start­ed. I had nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly known, or heard o,f Ramdeen (al­though when we start­ed work­ing to­geth­er, it be­came clear that he had known Ram­lo­gan for a num­ber of years)."

Nel­son, in an­oth­er state­ment tak­en on Feb­ru­ary 2, 2019, at the Hilton Ho­tel in Bar­ba­dos, men­tioned a meet­ing he had at Ram­lo­gan's cham­bers at the Ca­bil­do build­ing, which housed the AG's of­fice, and his in­sis­tence on be­ing paid a ten per cent fee.

"He asked (name called) and (name called) to leave the room, leav­ing Ramdeen and my­self to­geth­er with him and at this point, he men­tioned about the kick­back and he stat­ed that it is a con­di­tion that I pay back ten per cent of the fees to him and I told him that this is not some­thing that we ought to be do­ing and his re­ac­tion was that is was a con­di­tion and he in­sist­ed."

Vincent Nelson

Salary too small

Apart from these meet­ings, Nel­son men­tioned in his no­tarised state­ment that Ram­lo­gan again asked for a per­cent­age of fees in No­vem­ber 2011 and out­lined how the fees would be paid.

He al­so re­called an­oth­er meet­ing in Sep­tem­ber 2012. This was in Kingston, Ja­maica, and took place in Nel­son's car on their way to his home.

"I was told by Ram­lo­gan that he was at­tend­ing a meet­ing of Caribbean At­tor­neys Gen­er­al and he re­quest­ed that I in­vite him to din­ner at my house in Ja­maica. I did so. I arranged to col­lect him from, I be­lieve, the Court­yard Ho­tel, in Kingston. When I ar­rived, Ram­lo­gan was with a young fe­male lawyer who was, as I un­der­stood it, work­ing in the AG's De­part­ment. I do not rec­ol­lect her name. Ram­lo­gan trav­elled to my house in my car and the fe­male lawyer trav­elled in his car with a dri­ver. Dur­ing the course of the jour­ney, I re­call that Ram­lo­gan made a sort of apol­o­gy for ask­ing for a kick­back, by say­ing words to the ef­fect that his salary as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was very small com­pared to what he was pre­vi­ous­ly earn­ing as (sic) self-em­ployed at­tor­ney and that he need­ed to sup­ple­ment the salary to sur­vive fi­nan­cial­ly."

Nel­son was al­so ques­tioned by the ACIB about the fol­low­ing let­ter that he pro­vid­ed to the State as ev­i­dence that it was al­leged­ly back-dat­ed and sent by Ram­lo­gan to him.

The let­ter read:

OF­FICE OF THE AT­TOR­NEY GEN­ER­AL

SEN­A­TOR THE HO­N­OURABLE ANAND RAM­LO­GAN SC

16 No­vem­ber 2010

Mr Vin­cent Nel­son QC

C/o My­ers Fletch­er Gor­don

Park Place, East Street, Kingston

Ja­maica

Dear Mr Nel­son,

Re: Your En­gage­ment

I write fur­ther to our meet­ing to con­firm my in­ter­est in re­tain­ing you to pro­vide le­gal ad­vice to and rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the State.

My col­leagues in Ja­maica and Lon­don have con­firmed your cre­den­tials and your as­so­ci­a­tion with the rep­utable lo­cal cham­bers of Mr Ger­ald Ramdeen leaves me in no doubt that we can ben­e­fit from the wis­dom of your Coun­sel.

As I in­formed you the aim is not on­ly to ob­tain your lit­i­ga­tion ex­pe­ri­ence but al­so to as­sist in the train­ing of lawyers in my Min­istry and at the Bar gen­er­al­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go so that they will be in a po­si­tion to un­der­take the le­gal work you will be un­der­tak­ing on be­half of my Min­istry.

Sin­cere­ly

Sgd

Anand Ram­lo­gan SC

At­tor­ney-at-Law”

This let­ter, ac­cord­ing to Nel­son's state­ment, was to sup­port a claim of "fic­tion" that Nel­son was rent­ing cham­ber space from Ramdeen, which Nel­son de­nied. He dis­missed the arrange­ment as a "sham" in his state­ment against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen.

In his state­ment to of­fi­cers of the ACIB on April 30, 2019, Nel­son in­di­cat­ed, "The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (Ram­lo­gan) pur­port­ed to give sub­stance to this agree­ment by writ­ing a let­ter to me...The let­ter pur­port­ed­ly signed by Anand Ram­lo­gan dat­ed 16.11.10 was sent to me elec­tron­i­cal­ly via text mes­sage. I can­not re­mem­ber the name of the per­son who sent it on be­half of Mr Ram­lo­gan. I recog­nise Mr Ram­lo­gan's sig­na­ture due to our busi­ness deal­ing."

Nel­son's state­ment not­ed that in the let­ter, Ram­lo­gan at­tached the des­ig­na­tion of Se­nior Coun­sel (SC) at the end of the cor­re­spon­dence dat­ed No­vem­ber 16, 2010. How­ev­er, he (Ram­lo­gan) had not be­come an SC un­til De­cem­ber 30, 2011.

Ram­lo­gan pissed off, Ramdeen was my friend and I trust­ed him

In the state­ment that Nel­son gave to ACIB of­fi­cers in Bar­ba­dos on Feb­ru­ary 2, 2019, he spoke about how Ram­lo­gan be­came pissed off af­ter he fell out with a par­tic­u­lar King's Coun­sel with re­gard to monies to be paid to him (Ram­lo­gan).

Nel­son said in 2015, he had met with Ramdeen at the Hy­att ho­tel.

"I was asked by Ramdeen to re­pay him about fif­teen thou­sand pounds, as he had done me a favour of pay­ing my sub­scrip­tion re­new­al fees. He in­di­cat­ed that he need­ed the mon­ey be­cause his fees were late from the AG's de­part­ment, this led to him say­ing that Mr Ram­lo­gan was pissed off that (King's Coun­sel name called) haven't paid what was to be paid to him (Mr Ram­lo­gan). Mr Ramdeen told me that (King's Coun­sel name called) said that he had to sell a house first to be able to pay the monies."

Nel­son said dur­ing the years 2010 to 2015, he de­vel­oped a good work­ing re­la­tion­ship and friend­ship with Ramdeen.

"We worked a lot and he be­came what I would con­sid­er my friend. We so­cialised to­geth­er dur­ing this pe­ri­od and I trust­ed him–for ex­am­ple, I trav­elled with him for a week­end to To­ba­go and even stayed at his home."

Nel­son, mak­ing ref­er­ence to his no­tarised state­ment, said that a plan was con­coct­ed to draw up an agree­ment be­tween him­self and Ramdeen, for him al­leged­ly us­ing Ramdeen's cham­bers while in T&T. Nel­son, how­ev­er, told po­lice he "vis­it­ed Ramdeen's cham­bers on ap­prox­i­mate­ly five oc­ca­sions and he did not rent any cham­bers."

'Cham­ber agree­ment' a 'sham'

Nel­son al­so added in his state­ment that he lo­cat­ed a doc­u­ment pur­suant to the "cham­ber arrange­ment."

"The doc­u­ment was in­tend­ed to show that I was em­ployed by Ramdeen's cham­bers where he says he col­lect­ed among oth­er things cham­ber fees. The rea­son why the doc­u­ment is a sham it is dat­ed 2010. Ramdeen was not in Cor­ne­lio Cham­bers in 2010. So he could not have signed the doc­u­ment for 2010 at Cor­ne­lio Street."

The wire-trans­fer pay­ments, he in­di­cat­ed, were made to Ramdeen's Sco­tia­bank ac­count, which in turn would be hand­ed over in cash to Ram­lo­gan.

Nel­son said since they were "still friends," in 2013 he sought Ramdeen's as­sis­tance in de­posit­ing £520,000 in­to his RBC ac­count since he did not want his ex-wife to see the pay­ment on his bank state­ment. He told po­lice it had noth­ing to do with kick­backs but rather "a sin­gle pay­ment of £520,000 which re­lat­ed to my fi­nances."

He said, “Ramdeen vol­un­teered to help me and sug­gest­ed the trans­fer of funds to the RBC ac­count through his own per­son­al ac­count, there­by al­low­ing me to place the funds in the RBC ac­count with­out re­veal­ing its ex­is­tence. I agreed to do this. I trans­ferred £520,000 to his ac­count on 23, Ju­ly 2013. When I made the trans­fer, I no­ti­fied Ramdeen, as well as the Di­rec­tor of my in­vest­ment ac­count with RBC. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Ramdeen's bank re­fused to un­der­take the trans­ac­tion and the £520,000 was re­turned to me in its en­tire­ty on 6 Au­gust 2013. My bank state­ments are avail­able and clear­ly show the same ref­er­ence num­ber for both the pay­ment out of my ac­count and the pay­ment back in."

Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen mum on al­le­ga­tions

Last Tues­day, Guardian Me­dia reached out to Ramdeen by tele­phone to an­swer some fur­ther ques­tions about the Nel­son mat­ter, as it re­lat­ed to the al­le­ga­tions made against him and Ram­lo­gan in the crim­i­nal case that has now been dis­missed.

Ramdeen said, "We are not mak­ing any fur­ther state­ments on the mat­ter."

He was told some ques­tions would be sent via What­sApp should he re­con­sid­er, and he agreed. Ques­tions were sent to Ram­lo­gan via What­sApp on Tues­day and Wednes­day. Two ticks next to the mes­sage in­di­cat­ed it was de­liv­ered. Al­though Ram­lo­gan was on­line on What­sApp, he did not an­swer any of the ques­tions.

Ques­tions to Ram­lo­gan:

1. Why have you not sought to in­ter­vene in the Nel­son civ­il case in or­der to clear your name?

2. Mr Nel­son in his civ­il pro­ceed­ings made damn­ing al­le­ga­tions of crimes al­leged­ly com­mit­ted by you. Are you con­cerned that you may be dis­barred as the pro­ce­dure could lead to this as in­di­cat­ed in Sec 37(2) of the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion Act?

3. Nel­son, in his no­tarised state­ments to of­fi­cers of the ACIB, al­leged that you com­mit­ted crimes? Is this true?

4. Al­le­ga­tions made against you by Mr Nel­son in­clud­ed re­ceiv­ing monies for kick­backs by way of wire trans­fer through Mr Ramdeen and then be­ing giv­en to you in cash. Nel­son in his state­ment to the ACIB al­so re­called sev­er­al meet­ings you had. He re­called a con­ver­sa­tion with you at his home in Ja­maica in Sep­tem­ber 2012, and he said, quote, "I re­call that Ram­lo­gan made a sort of apol­o­gy for ask­ing for a kick­back, by say­ing words to the ef­fect that his salary as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was very small com­pared to what he was pre­vi­ous­ly earn­ing as a self-em­ployed at­tor­ney and that he need­ed to sup­ple­ment the salary to sur­vive fi­nan­cial­ly." Is this true?

5. In the state­ment made to Sen Supt Nurse at the Hilton Ho­tel in Bar­ba­dos Mr Nel­son al­so spoke about a meet­ing with you, Mr Ramdeen, (lo­cal at­tor­ney name called) and (King's Coun­sel name called) in re­gard to probes re­gard­ing for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials first at a com­mit­tee room in Par­lia­ment. Nel­son said (King's Coun­sel name called) and (lo­cal at­tor­ney name called) were lat­er asked to leave and Mr Ramdeen stayed. Nel­son stat­ed, quote, "At this point, he (Ram­lo­gan) men­tioned about the kick­back and he stat­ed that it is a con­di­tion that I pay back ten per cent fees to him and I told him that this is not some­thing that we ought to be do­ing and his re­ac­tion was that it was a con­di­tion and he in­sist­ed. I then asked him how it is to be done and he re­spond­ed as set out in my sec­ond state­ment para­graph twelve." Is this a true ac­count of what tran­spired at that meet­ing?

6. In his state­ment Nel­son al­leged that you sent a let­ter to him on No­vem­ber 16, 2010. The no­tarised state­ment al­leged that the aim of the let­ter was to say that Nel­son was rent­ing cham­ber space from Ramdeen. Nel­son al­leged that you is­sued this let­ter and sent it to him to be ev­i­dence of the cham­ber arrange­ment ex­cept that you back­dat­ed it and for­got you had not be­come SC un­til De­cem­ber 30, 2011.

Can you al­so clar­i­fy this, and did you back­date the let­ter as claimed and signed it Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC even be­fore you were made an SC?

7. Are you con­cerned that Mr Nel­son has nev­er with­drawn his ev­i­dence ac­cus­ing you of crim­i­nal con­duct?

Calls were made to Ram­lo­gan twice last week and again yes­ter­day but he did not re­spond.

Ques­tions sent to Ramdeen:

1. Why have you not sought to in­ter­vene in the Nel­son civ­il case in or­der to clear your name?

2. Mr Nel­son in his civ­il pro­ceed­ings made damn­ing al­le­ga­tions of crimes al­leged­ly com­mit­ted by you. Are you con­cerned that you may be dis­barred as the pro­ce­dure could lead to this as in­di­cat­ed in Sec 37(2) of the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion Act?

3. Nel­son in his no­tarised state­ments to of­fi­cers of the ACIB al­leged that you com­mit­ted crimes? Is this true?

4. Al­le­ga­tions made against you by Mr Nel­son in­clud­ed re­ceiv­ing monies for kick­backs by way of a wire trans­fer to your Sco­tia­bank ac­count. Is this true? He al­so stat­ed that you all be­came good friends be­tween 2010-2015, and he even spent time at your home in To­ba­go. Is this cor­rect? He said he even sought your as­sis­tance in de­posit­ing £520,000 in­to your RBC ac­count since he did not want his ex-wife to see the pay­ment on his bank state­ment. Is that true? He said the mon­ey was trans­ferred to your RBC ac­count but lat­er re­turned by the bank. Is that al­so true?

In his state­ment to the po­lice he lat­er in­di­cat­ed and I quote, "I have re­ferred to my state­ment a £520,000 trans­ac­tion since Bar­ba­dos. I have lo­cat­ed a doc­u­ment which was used by Ramdeen in this trans­ac­tion. It is a copy, the orig­i­nal copy can­not be found. The doc­u­ment was in­tend­ed to show I was em­ployed by Ramdeen cham­bers where he col­lect­ed say among oth­er things cham­ber fees. The rea­son why the doc­u­ment is a sham it's dat­ed 2010. Ramdeen was not in Cor­ne­lio Cham­ber in 2010." Is this al­le­ga­tion true?

5. Are you con­cerned that Mr Nel­son has nev­er with­drawn his ev­i­dence ac­cus­ing you of crim­i­nal con­duct?