The Privy Coun­cil has told At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi that his writ­ten com­plaint con­cern­ing Anand Ram­lo­gan’s in­volve­ment in Petrotrin’s mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar law­suit in the Mal­colm Jones claim, was ir­rel­e­vant to the out­come of the ap­peal heard by the Law Lords.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al an­nounced his in­ten­tion to write the Privy Coun­cil, on April 1, to com­plain that Ram­lo­gan was not be­ing truth­ful when he said he demit­ted of­fice as AG in 2014, dur­ing an ap­peal hear­ing in March. Ram­lo­gan demit­ted of­fice in Feb­ru­ary 2015.

Al-Rawi wrote the Privy Coun­cil on April 11.

The ap­peal be­ing heard was UNC ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj’s at­tempt to gain dis­clo­sure of wit­ness state­ments used by Petrotrin to dis­con­tin­ue the $97m law­suit against the com­pa­ny’s for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man.

Queen’s Coun­sel Richard Clay­ton, who rep­re­sent­ed Ma­haraj, re­spond­ed to the AG’s let­ter with his own cor­re­spon­dence where he stat­ed, “The crit­i­cisms it makes are with­out sub­stance. The short point is that Mr Ram­lo­gan was nev­er the de­ci­sion-mak­er who ini­ti­at­ed pro­ceed­ings, and act­ed through­out in ac­cor­dance with his le­gal du­ties and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in the pros­e­cu­tion of the claim, as the Board minute re­quired him to do.”

In a let­ter dat­ed May 20, Louise di Mam­bro, Reg­is­trar of the Privy Coun­cil, re­spond­ed to the Al-Rawi, while al­so mak­ing ref­er­ence to QC Clay­ton’s re­sponse to AG’s com­plaints.

In it, the reg­is­trar says, “Your at­tach­ment “B” makes it clear the role which Mr Ram­lo­gan SC had in Petrotrin’s de­ci­sion to sue Mr Jones; and Mr Clay­ton does not dis­pute it in his re­sponse. He right­ly says there is no sug­ges­tion that Mr Ram­lo­gan’s role in it was im­prop­er. Whether it en­tire­ly cor­re­sponds with what the Board was told at the hear­ing is not a mat­ter which it in­tends to pur­sue. This cor­re­spon­dence, though im­por­tant, is thank­ful­ly ir­rel­e­vant to the out­come of the ap­peal and the Board in­structs me to do no more than place all these let­ters care­ful­ly on file.”

Last week Mon­day, the Privy Coun­cil ruled that Ma­haraj had an ar­guable case for ac­cess­ing the wit­ness state­ments and al­lowed his ap­peal. In their rul­ing, they said there ap­peared some grounds for think­ing the State’s de­ci­sion to aban­don the case was in­flu­enced by po­lit­i­cal fac­tors.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley sub­se­quent­ly in­struct­ed that the in­fo­ma­tion be­ing re­quest­ed be made pub­lic.