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Monday, July 14, 2025

Paria still won’t reveal legal fees paid to each attorney during CoE

by

Derek Achong
27 days ago
20250617
Gilbert Peterson, SC, headed  Paria’s legal team.

Gilbert Peterson, SC, headed Paria’s legal team.

KERWIN PIERRE

DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

State-owned Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed con­tin­ues to refuse to dis­close de­tails of the in­di­vid­ual fees paid to its at­tor­neys for the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to an in­ci­dent at its Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty that claimed the lives of four divers in 2022. 

Late last year, for­mer Petrotrin em­ploy­ee and Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) mem­ber An­tho­ny Dop­son made a dis­clo­sure re­quest for in­for­ma­tion on Paria’s le­gal fees un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA). 

Dop­son, through his lawyers led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, was forced to make a more spe­cif­ic fol­low-up re­quest, af­ter Paria was on­ly will­ing to re­veal that it had ex­pend­ed $8,951,753 on le­gal fees for the CoE. 

In Feb­ru­ary, at­tor­ney Kendell Alexan­der, of John­son, Ca­ma­cho, and Singh re­spond­ed on Paria’s be­half and in­di­cat­ed the com­pa­ny’s rea­son for re­fus­ing to dis­close the ex­act fees that were paid to the five lawyers on its le­gal team led by Se­nior Coun­sel Gilbert Pe­ter­son. 

Alexan­der re­lied on Sec­tion 30(1) of the FOIA, which ex­empts dis­clo­sure of per­son­al in­for­ma­tion of any in­di­vid­ual. 

“In light of the present so­cio-eco­nom­ic cli­mate in T&T, in which at­tor­neys-at-law are be­ing tar­get­ed by crim­i­nal el­e­ments, it is our client’s po­si­tion that it would be an un­rea­son­able dis­clo­sure of per­son­al in­for­ma­tion to pro­vide doc­u­ments dis­clos­ing the names of each at­tor­ney-at-law on Paria’s Com­mis­sion of En­quiry Team and the to­tal fees paid to them,” Alexan­der said. 

“Should this in­for­ma­tion be made pub­lic, as pre­vi­ous dis­clo­sures were, these at­tor­neys-at-law may find them­selves be­ing tar­get­ed,” she added. 

In a re­sponse, Dop­son’s lawyer Aasha Ram­lal threat­ened to file a law­suit over the de­ci­sion as she claimed that Paria’s con­cerns were spec­u­la­tive. 

“Trans­paren­cy in pub­lic ex­pen­di­ture has been achieved in sim­i­lar con­texts with­out com­pro­mis­ing safe­ty ... Pri­va­cy con­cerns can be mit­i­gat­ed through ap­pro­pri­ate redac­tions with­out un­der­min­ing the broad­er trans­paren­cy ob­jec­tive,” Ram­lal said. 

On June 10, Alexan­der wrote to Ram­lal dis­clos­ing a se­ries of in­voic­es that were sub­mit­ted by its le­gal team for the CoE. 

The in­voic­es showed the pre­vi­ous pay­ments dis­closed by Paria and iden­ti­fied the five lawyers on the team—Pe­ter­son, Ja­son Mootoo, SC, Gre­tel Baird, Thane Pierre and Se­bas­t­ian Pe­ter­son.

It al­so in­di­cat­ed that all pay­ments should be made to Pe­ter­son, SC, who would in turn dis­trib­ute the fees to the in­di­vid­ual mem­bers of the team.  

The in­voic­es were, how­ev­er, redact­ed to ex­clude the fees claimed by each of the at­tor­neys. 

New­ly elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­peat­ed­ly spoke out against pub­lic bod­ies re­ly­ing on such ex­emp­tions even while serv­ing as Op­po­si­tion Leader pre­vi­ous­ly. 

She al­so aimed at le­gal pro­fes­sion­als, who re­ceived State briefs and re­fused to al­low their names to be dis­closed un­der the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion. 

“And I am com­ing for those ‘eat ah food’ lawyers soon. You will be amazed at the amount of mon­ey be­ing spent, but you can’t give us the name ... you can­not use a de­fence of pri­va­cy,” she said. 

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s gov­ern­ment is yet to an­nounce its picks for Paria’s Board of Di­rec­tors. 

On Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, Land and Ma­rine Con­tract­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (LM­CS) divers Christo­pher Boodram, Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Na­gas­sar, Yusuf Hen­ry, and  Kaz­im Ali Jr, were sucked in­to the 30-inch-di­am­e­ter pipeline they were per­form­ing main­te­nance work on at Paria’s fa­cil­i­ty. 

Boodram man­aged to make his way to the en­trance of the pipeline and was res­cued.

Three of the divers’ bod­ies were re­cov­ered on Feb­ru­ary 28, while Na­gas­sar’s was re­cov­ered the fol­low­ing day. 

The then-Cab­i­net ini­tial­ly ap­point­ed a five-mem­ber team to in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dent but even­tu­al­ly ap­point­ed a CoE due to pub­lic crit­i­cism. 

In its re­port, the com­mis­sion, chaired by King’s Coun­sel Jerome Lynch, pre­sent­ed sev­er­al dozen rec­om­men­da­tions in­clud­ing charges un­der the OSH Act. 

The com­mis­sion al­so rec­om­mend­ed that Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, con­sid­er pros­e­cut­ing Paria for gross neg­li­gence manslaugh­ter. 

In Ju­ly, last year, DPP Gas­pard wrote to then-po­lice com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher for the ini­ti­a­tion of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine whether there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to pros­e­cute any per­son or en­ti­ty. 

In ear­ly April, for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced the then-cab­i­net had de­cid­ed to make a one-time ex-gra­tia pay­ment of $1 mil­lion each to Boodram and his col­leagues’ fam­i­lies with­out ad­mit­ting li­a­bil­i­ty. 

He claimed that the de­lay in the set­tle­ment of the cas­es was due to in­sur­ers for LM­CS and Paria dis­agree­ing on which com­pa­ny was li­able. 

Speak­ing to re­porters at the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny for her Cab­i­net Per­sad-Bisses­sar and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said they would need to in­ves­ti­gate whether the pay­ments were made by the for­mer gov­ern­ment.


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