Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Close to one bil­lion dol­lars has been paid out by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment for le­gal ser­vices and fees in the last sev­en years.

Ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian, UNC ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj and his le­gal team, led by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, spent six months work­ing on a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­quest which stat­ed that the PNM paid out $799.8 mil­lion be­tween Sep­tem­ber 2015 to Jan­u­ary 25, 2022. How­ev­er, that fig­ure does not in­clude le­gal fees paid by all gov­ern­ment min­istries and state en­ter­pris­es dur­ing that time frame.

The le­gal fees fig­ures are still out­stand­ing for the min­istries of En­er­gy; Fi­nance; Sport; the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice; Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force; Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment; Hous­ing and De­vel­op­ment with the Land Set­tle­ment Agency and the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion. If these fees are made avail­able and added, the to­tal amount spent on le­gal briefs by the Gov­ern­ment since Sep­tem­ber 2015 is near to or like­ly to ex­ceed the bil­lion-dol­lar mark.

The doc­u­ments showed that 91 at­tor­neys and le­gal firms re­ceived $1 mil­lion or more–with some col­lect­ing be­tween $2 mil­lion to $22 mil­lion–dur­ing this pe­ri­od from SWM­COL and the min­istries of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment; Pub­lic Util­i­ties; Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment; Trade and In­dus­try; Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts; Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries; Health; Labour; For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs; At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs; Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion; Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty; and Works and Trans­port.

Fyard Hosein

Lo­cal at­tor­neys get $174.5 mil­lion

Since Sep­tem­ber 2015, 51 lo­cal at­tor­neys have re­ceived pay­ments worth $1 mil­lion or more from the State.

A hand­ful of well-known at­tor­neys re­ceived over $15 mil­lion each.

Russell Martineau, SC

*The high­est-earn­ing at­tor­ney dur­ing that pe­ri­od was for­mer PNM at­tor­ney gen­er­al Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, who was paid $21.845 mil­lion. Mar­tineau be­came a se­nior coun­sel in 1993. He’s al­so served as Pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion.

Claude Denbow, SC

*The sec­ond-high­est earn­ing at­tor­ney was Claude Den­bow, SC, who earned $17.526 mil­lion. Den­bow was ap­point­ed a se­nior coun­sel in 1998.

*Fa­yard Ho­sein, SC, who rep­re­sent­ed the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in sev­er­al high-pro­file mat­ters, earned $17.404 mil­lion.

*Cur­rent At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, was paid $13.027 mil­lion be­fore tak­ing up of­fice. The for­mer pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion–who spe­cialis­es in labour re­la­tions, con­sti­tu­tion­al and pub­lic law and fraud–was ap­point­ed as a se­nior coun­sel in 2003.

*Deb­o­rah Peake, SC, was paid $10.655 mil­lion.

*Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, the chair­man of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, re­ceived $10.641 mil­lion.

*Ja­son Mootoo–$9.986 mil­lion.

*Seenath Jairam, SC,–$9.252 mil­lion.

*Ne­tram Kow­lessar, head of the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty Unit in the AG’s of­fice un­der the PP gov­ern­ment–$9.075 mil­lion.

*For­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion mem­ber Roger Kawals­ingh was paid $7.43 mil­lion. Kawals­ingh made head­lines in 2021 when it was re­vealed that he had copied Gary Grif­fith on sen­si­tive emails re­gard­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Grif­fith's con­duct. He re­signed from the PSC fol­low­ing the se­lec­tion process saga. Ear­li­er this year, po­lice in­ves­ti­gat­ed for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi for al­leged­ly fail­ing to trans­fer the mo­tor ve­hi­cle reg­is­tra­tion of a car sold to Kawals­ingh in 2016. Al-Rawi de­nied the ac­cu­sa­tions.

Kawals­ingh is al­so the at­tor­ney for Vin­cent Nel­son, QC, who is the main wit­ness in the cor­rup­tion case against for­mer AG Ram­lo­gan and at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen.

*Ker­wyn Gar­cia was paid $6.83 mil­lion. Gar­cia, a for­mer board mem­ber of TSTT and Petrotrin, is the hus­band of Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo.

*For­mer pres­i­dent of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion and for­mer chair­man of the Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion Dou­glas Mendes, SC, earned $6.278 mil­lion.

*The Chair­man of Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Lim­it­ed Michael Quam­i­na was paid $5.6 mil­lion by the state for le­gal ser­vices.

*The Chair­man of WASA Ravi Nan­ga re­ceived $5.3 mil­lion.

*Oth­er well-known at­tor­neys earn­ing more than $1 mil­lion in­clud­ed Ian Ben­jamin–$4.32 mil­lion; El­ton Prescott SC–$4.3 mil­lion; Is­rael Khan SC–$4.2 mil­lion; UNC mem­ber Kelvin Ramkissoon–$2.562 mil­lion; T&TEC board mem­ber Raphael Ajod­hia–$2.187 mil­lion; Di­rec­tor of Le­gal Ser­vices at Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs Suni­ta Har­rikissoon–$2.038 mil­lion; PNM’s MP for Port-of-Spain South Kei­th Scot­land–$1.8 mil­lion; An­gos­tu­ra Chair­man Ter­rence Bharath–$1.691 mil­lion; For­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Christlyn Moore–$1.297 mil­lion; There­sa Hadad–$1.112 mil­lion.

Attorney Anand Ramlogan.

For­eign at­tor­neys paid $63.345 mil­lion

Ten for­eign at­tor­neys, who earned more than $ 1 mil­lion each, re­ceived ap­prox­i­mate­ly $63.36 mil­lion in to­tal.

*Ja­maican-born, British Queen’s Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son, QC, was paid $10.999 mil­lion in out­stand­ing fees from his work for the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship be­tween 2017 and 2019 by the State. Nel­son had sued the State to re­cov­er this sum but sub­se­quent­ly with­drew af­ter AG Al-Rawi agreed to pay him. In 2020, Nel­son was fined $2.25 mil­lion af­ter plead­ing guilty to two cor­rup­tion-re­lat­ed charges. As part of the plea deal, he agreed to be­come a state wit­ness in a le­gal fees kick­back case against for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and for­mer UNC sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen.

*Queen’s Coun­sel Jonathon Davis was paid $10.120 mil­lion. The British bar­ris­ter rep­re­sent­ed state com­pa­ny Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed in a $1.3 bil­lion law­suit filed by the lo­cal con­struc­tion com­pa­ny, NA­MAL­CO Con­struc­tion Ser­vices Ltd. EM­BD was lat­er or­dered to pay $427 mil­lion.

*Among oth­er pay­ments were to Queen’s Coun­sel An­neliese Day who was paid $9.37 mil­lion; Ed­win Jenk­ins, QC–$7.316 mil­lion; Hugh Saun­ders, QC–$6.983 mil­lion; George Hay­man, QC–$6.768 mil­lion; Stephanie Bar­wise, QC–$4.481 mil­lion; James Lewis, QC–$1.697 mil­lion; and Si­mon Maskrey, QC–$1.641 mil­lion.

Mil­lions more were al­so paid to for­eign and lo­cal firms.

Be­fore en­ter­ing and since en­ter­ing of­fice, mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment made nu­mer­ous claims that the PP gov­ern­ment al­leged­ly spent sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey on le­gal briefs.

At a press con­fer­ence in Ju­ly 2021, Al-Rawi claimed that the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs un­der the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion–which gov­erned be­tween 2010 and 2015–spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly $636.2 mil­lion in le­gal fees.

In Oc­to­ber 2015, Al-Rawi es­ti­mat­ed that $1 bil­lion was paid to at­tor­neys by min­istries and state en­ter­pris­es dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship stint in of­fice.

"The fig­ure–with 47 state en­ter­pris­es yet to re­port, 18 min­istries yet to re­port–is $892,607,271. Let me put it clos­er, if you add the $10 mil­lion er­ror, you are at $900 mil­lion in le­gal fees spent over five years." for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Al-Rawi told the low­er house.

He claimed that 11 un­named lawyers earned $245.2 mil­lion be­tween them. Al-Rawi was crit­i­cal of the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion for spend­ing such large sums on le­gal fees and promised to be more eco­nom­i­cal by us­ing in-house lawyers from the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al's de­part­ment.

Dur­ing a 2016 bud­get de­bate, the then AG said go­ing for­ward, se­nior coun­sels would on­ly be hired where re­quired and promised that all ex­pens­es would be re­viewed.

Ravi Balgobin Maharaj

FACEBOOK

For­eign firms paid $67.7 mil­lion

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ments ob­tained by Bal­go­b­in-Ma­haraj, of the le­gal firms re­ceiv­ing more than $1 mil­lion, one was a Unit­ed States-based firm and five were Unit­ed King­dom-based firms.

The six for­eign firms re­ceived ap­prox­i­mate­ly $67.7 mil­lion.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ments, the most ex­pen­sive le­gal pay­ment made to a for­eign or­ga­ni­za­tion was not to a firm but to a com­pa­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, the pay­ment was to Irish com­pa­ny Ver­ti­cal Avi­a­tion LLC in a 2019 law­suit set­tle­ment of $37.125 mil­lion.

The com­pa­ny ini­tial­ly sought ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$13 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion from the gov­ern­ment con­cern­ing an al­leged breach of con­tract for the end­ing of a he­li­copter lease signed un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment in 2014.

Ac­cord­ing to for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, and cur­rent En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young, the PP gov­ern­ment leased the he­li­copter for five years at US$120,000 a month in 2015, in ad­di­tion to in­sur­ance and main­te­nance costs of more than US$500,000.

How­ev­er, Young said that the he­li­copter nev­er ar­rived in Trinidad, as it lacked the nec­es­sary cer­ti­fi­ca­tions.

The Gov­ern­ment pulled out of the con­tract but was sued by Ver­ti­cal Avi­a­tion for breach of con­tract.

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­nied any wrong­do­ing by the PP gov­ern­ment, cast­ing blame on the PNM Gov­ern­ment in­stead.

The oth­er for­eign firms that re­ceived more than $1 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, were Charles, Rus­sell, and Speechlys–$27.891 mil­lion; Fresh­field, Bruck­haus and De­ringer–$10.484 mil­lion; Coo­ley Uk–$8.032 mil­lion; An­dreas Silch­ers-Haynes and Boone–$3.836 mil­lion; and Eth­i­ca Con­sul­tants– $3.35 mil­lion.

The third high­est le­gal pay­ment to a for­eign or­gan­i­sa­tion is al­so of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est.

Se­quor Law PA was paid $13.581 mil­lion.

Sub­ject to the out­come of an ap­peal, Se­quor Law was dis­qual­i­fied, along with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, by a Mi­a­mi court for al­leged con­flict of in­ter­est.

Se­quor Law was re­tained by the Gov­ern­ment to over­see civ­il pro­ceed­ings re­lat­ed to al­leged fraud and cor­rup­tion in­volved in the Pi­ar­co Air­port Project.

Se­quor Law al­leged­ly con­sult­ed with AG Ar­mour on the case. How­ev­er, Ar­mour once rep­re­sent­ed for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung in a crim­i­nal case con­cern­ing the same Pi­ar­co Air­port Project.

Ar­mour swore in an af­fi­davit to the court that he func­tioned as a ju­nior at­tor­ney in the Kuei Tung de­fence case.

He lat­er said that he could not cor­rect his af­fi­davit be­cause the judge made the or­der be­fore he could do so.

The Mi­a­mi court’s rul­ing meant that, bar­ring a suc­cess­ful ap­peal, the state must re­place Se­quor Law and find new coun­sel, mean­ing the mon­ey paid to Se­quor may have been for nought.

Lo­cal firms get $233.34 mil­lion

Twen­ty-three lo­cal firms each earned more than $1 mil­lion, re­ceiv­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $233.34 mil­lion in to­tal. De­loitte and Touche–Trinidad re­ceived the most in le­gal fees from the state, ap­prox­i­mate­ly $134.295 mil­lion. Their bill alone ac­count­ed for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 17% of all the re­port­ed le­gal fees spent by the gov­ern­ment since 2015.

De­loitte and Touche–Trinidad, one of the largest firms in the coun­try, is a sub­sidiary of the in­ter­na­tion­al le­gal firm De­loitte and Touche LLP. The firm of­fers con­sult­ing ser­vices, au­dits, fi­nan­cial ad­vi­so­ry, tax ser­vices and risk man­age­ment.

Among the oth­er well-known firms re­ceiv­ing more than $1 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, were Fitzwilliam, Stone, Fur­ness-Smith, Mor­gan–$21.2 mil­lion; Pol­lon­ais, Blanc De La Bastide and Jacelon–$10.3 mil­lion; Charles Law–$8.82 mil­lion; MG Daly and Part­ners–$7.8 mil­lion; Mair and Com­pa­ny–$6.617 mil­lion; Hove and As­so­ciates–$6.378 mil­lion; JD Sel­l­i­er and Com­pa­ny–$6.211 mil­lion; Price­wa­ter­house Coop­er Ad­vi­so­ry Ser­vices–$3.576 mil­lion; Lex Caribbean–$3.023 mil­lion; De­vesh Ma­haraj and As­so­ciates–$2.786 mil­lion; Har­rikissoon and Com­pa­ny–$1.798 mil­lion.

Hinds and Com­pa­ny, a firm in which Mar­garet Hinds–the wife of Fitzger­ald Hinds–is a se­nior part­ner, re­ceived $1.585 mil­lion.

Alexan­der, Je­re­mie and Com­pa­ny–a firm in which the for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al un­der Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, John Je­re­mie, SC, is a se­nior part­ner–re­ceived $3.3 mil­lion.

BOX

Guide on as­sess­ment of costs by CJ Ivor Archie

Ac­cord­ing to the Oc­to­ber 2015 ju­di­cial doc­u­ment com­piled by Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie en­ti­tled “Sec­ond Prac­tice Guide to the As­sess­ment of Costs”, when con­sid­er­ing what fee should be al­lowed for work done by in­struct­ing or ad­vo­cate at­tor­neys the court should cal­cu­late such fees based on an hourly rate in ac­cor­dance with guide­line fig­ures.

Ac­cord­ing to guide­line fig­ures he pro­vid­ed, in­struct­ing at­tor­neys with five years of ex­pe­ri­ence or less should charge an av­er­age rate of $750 an hour, while an ad­vo­cate should charge an av­er­age rate of $900 an hour; an in­struct­ing at­tor­ney with more than five but less than ten years ex­pe­ri­ence should charge an av­er­age rate of $1,200 an hour, while an ad­vo­cate should charge an av­er­age rate of $1,400 per hour; an in­struct­ing at­tor­ney with more than ten but less than 20 years ex­pe­ri­ence should charge around $1,950 per hour, while an ad­vo­cate at­tor­ney should charge around $2,300 per hour; an in­struct­ing at­tor­ney with more than 20 years ex­pe­ri­ence should charge around $2,600 per hour, while an ad­vo­cate at­tor­ney should charge ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2,850 per hour; a se­nior coun­sel or queen’s coun­sel should charge ap­prox­i­mate­ly $4,000 per hour.

In 2017, it was es­ti­mat­ed in the Ju­di­cia­ry’s 2017-2018 re­port that of 709 cas­es in the court back­log in­ven­to­ry, 352 cas­es were pend­ing for 15 or more years, 88 cas­es were pend­ing be­tween ten and 15 years, while 269 were pend­ing be­tween five to ten years.

Ac­cord­ing to the Ju­di­cia­ry’s 2020-2021 re­port, there were 5,992 pend­ing ac­tive mat­ters be­fore the civ­il high court as of Ju­ly 31, 2021.

31 per cent were com­mer­cial, 27 per cent were per­son­al ac­tion mat­ters and 24 per cent were land mat­ters.

Attorney General Reginald Armour

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

AG promis­es to re­view, re­spond af­ter re­view­ing AGLA pol­i­cy of his pre­de­ces­sor

Over the last two weeks, the Sun­day Guardian at­tempt­ed to get a re­sponse from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to of­fer, as best pos­si­ble, bal­ance to the sto­ry.

At­tempts to con­tact the of­fice’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment via phone or email were not suc­cess­ful.

Emails and calls went unan­swered.

On Au­gust 29, Sun­day Guardian mes­saged At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, say­ing that we’ve been pro­vid­ed with a list­ing of at­tor­neys who re­ceived more than $1 mil­lion from the Gov­ern­ment for briefs from the pe­ri­od Sep­tem­ber 2015 to June 2021.

Sun­day Guardian pro­vid­ed the doc­u­ments con­tain­ing the lists of pay­ments and asked the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

First­ly, I would like con­fir­ma­tion of whether the fig­ures list­ed in the doc­u­ments are ac­cu­rate

Sec­ond­ly, I would like a state­ment/com­ment on whether the fig­ures list­ed are rea­son­able, in terms of val­ue for mon­ey.

Third­ly, I would like a com­par­i­son, as best pos­si­ble, with the fig­ures paid for state briefs dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship’s stint in of­fice from 2010-2015.

Fourth­ly, did the Gov­ern­ment take steps to min­imise, as best pos­si­ble, the cost of le­gal briefs to the state?

How much of a fac­tor, in the costs in­curred, were le­gal chal­lenges brought about by the op­po­si­tion and op­po­si­tion-af­fil­i­at­ed lawyers? Are there sta­tis­tics for the num­ber of cas­es the Op­po­si­tion brought about and the costs to the state?

Is there any mech­a­nism in place to en­sure that there’s no favouritism in the se­lec­tion of lawyers or firms? Are there process­es in place to en­sure that this isn’t pos­si­ble?

Is it per­mis­si­ble for rel­a­tives of cab­i­net mem­bers to re­ceive min­is­te­r­i­al le­gal briefs? And if so, what are the rules/lim­i­ta­tions of such arrange­ments, if any?

The AG replied say­ing, “Mr Seemu­n­gal, I will at­tempt to re­vert once a) re­view the ma­te­ri­als and b) re­view the AGLA pol­i­cy of my pre­de­ces­sor on the sub­ject, in the event that I de­cide to ad­here or not, as the case may be.”