Chester Sam­bra­no

News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

A new lo­ca­tion for the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) has been iden­ti­fied. The pro­posed space is the un­oc­cu­pied First Cit­i­zens (FCB) build­ing on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain.

This fol­lows what can be de­scribed as a pub­lic im­passe be­tween At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour and DPP Roger Gas­pard over a pre­vi­ous­ly iden­ti­fied build­ing on Park Street, Port-of-Spain.

Dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment meet­ing af­ter the 2024 Bud­get, AG Ar­mour said that $55 mil­lion in rental fees had been paid for the Park Street build­ing since 2019, but the DPP and his staff nev­er moved in, cit­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

But when con­tact­ed about a new lo­ca­tion yes­ter­day, DPP Gas­pard con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that he was in­vit­ed to view the new pro­posed site.

“In terms of the se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns that at­tend­ed up­on the build­ing on Park Street, those con­cerns do not ob­tain in re­la­tion to the build­ing that I would re­cent­ly have been in­vit­ed to look at,” Gas­pard said.

He said the view­ing took place ap­prox­i­mate­ly six months ago, but at the mo­ment he could not give a time­frame for when the ac­tu­al move would take place. He said this was be­cause the build­ing needs some re­fur­bish­ment, which the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is look­ing in­to.

“So as far as the progress of that par­tic­u­lar is­sue is con­cerned, the best per­son to speak to about that would be the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al,” he said.

The DPP did not in­di­cate what the pay­ment arrange­ments would be for the new of­fice. How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia has been re­li­ably in­formed by a well-placed source at First Cit­i­zens that the build­ing is still owned by the bank but was put up for sale, as it is no longer a prac­ti­cal place for it to con­duct busi­ness.

The source in­di­cat­ed that the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al had put in a bid for the build­ing but the sta­tus of that bid re­mains un­clear at this time.

The Draft Es­ti­mates of De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme for the Fi­nan­cial Year 2025 doc­u­ment states that $3,130,000 was es­ti­mat­ed for the “out­fit­ting of ac­com­mo­da­tion for the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, North.”

When con­tact­ed about this fig­ure and the place where the mon­ey is planned to be spent, AG Ar­mour said he will be speak­ing at the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee (SFC), when he ex­pects to ad­dress this among oth­er mat­ters.

Based on the sched­ule put out by the Par­lia­ment, the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs is set to ap­pear be­fore the SFC to­day.

The se­lec­tion and agree­ment of the new lo­ca­tion came af­ter weeks of back and forth on the for­mer Park Street lo­ca­tion.

At one stage, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so crit­i­cised the DPP for not oc­cu­py­ing the build­ing.

“We had to out­fit it to suit the de­part­ment that was go­ing to go in there. We did all that. Then we heard that there were se­cu­ri­ty is­sues; we spent mon­ey strength­en­ing the fa­cil­i­ty, bul­let­proof here, this that there. We did all of that. At the end of the day, af­ter we spent 55 mil­lion dol­lars, a pub­lic ser­vant could de­cide, ‘Ah, not go­ing in there’. Some­thing has to be wrong with that! And as a tax­pay­er, I am in­censed that that could hap­pen in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

How­ev­er, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, de­fend­ed Gas­pard and his staff’s de­ci­sion not to move in­to the Park Street lo­ca­tion. Ma­haraj said af­ter launch­ing an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he con­clud­ed that the DPP could not be blamed for the ex­pen­di­ture on the build­ing.