Derek Achong

Ja­maican-born British Queen’s Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son re­ceived al­most $11 mil­lion in out­stand­ing le­gal fees from the State over a year be­fore he agreed to serve as its main wit­ness in a le­gal fee kick­back cor­rup­tion case against for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and for­mer op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen.

Ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments over le­gal fees paid to pri­vate prac­ti­tion­ers by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al over the past six years, which were laid in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, Nel­son was paid $10,230,502.96 be­tween 2017 and 2018 and $768,718.50 be­tween 2018 and 2019.

This was in ad­di­tion to the $40,671,814.26 he re­ceived be­tween 2010 and 2015.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that in 2016, Nel­son sued the state over a £1.5 mil­lion re­tain­er con­tract agreed be­tween him and the AG’s Of­fice in No­vem­ber 2014 to rep­re­sent the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) in a se­ries of tax ap­peals against en­er­gy com­pa­ny BP Trinidad and To­ba­go (bpTT).

The re­tain­er in­clud­ed all fees as­so­ci­at­ed with the ap­peals in­clud­ing trav­el ex­pens­es and it was agreed that he be paid in ten pay­ments of £150,000.

Nel­son on­ly re­ceived three of the month­ly pay­ments and was forced to file the law­suit to re­cov­er the re­main­der.

In his ev­i­dence in the case, Nel­son ad­mit­ted that the re­tain­er was cho­sen to en­sure that there would be no is­sue with re­pay­ment in the event that there was a change of Gov­ern­ment af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2015.

At the time, the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al strong­ly op­posed Nel­son’s claim and ap­plied to High Court Judge Ricky Rahim to strike out the law­suit at a pre­lim­i­nary stage for it be­ing an abuse of process.

On Oc­to­ber 6, 2017, Rahim dis­missed the ap­pli­ca­tion as he dis­agreed that seg­ments of the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion Act (LPA), which on­ly gives at­tor­neys the pow­er to sue their clients for un­paid fees in cir­cum­stances where the fees in­voiced were in­de­pen­dent­ly as­sessed by a High Court Mas­ter or Reg­is­trar, ap­plied.

He al­so not­ed that the is­sues raised in the law­suit need­ed to go to tri­al, as the AG’s Of­fice was at the time claim­ing that Nel­son breached his re­tain­er con­tract by fail­ing to com­plete the tasks agreed up­on, as the BIR cas­es were set­tled with­out a full hear­ing as ini­tial­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed.

“These mat­ters can on­ly be de­cid­ed if they are raised in a de­fence and the is­sues are tried. It how­ev­er ap­pears to this court that the de­fen­dant has ac­cept­ed that a re­tain­er was en­tered in­to for the pay­ment of the fees,” Rahim said as he gave the AG’s Of­fice an ex­ten­sion to file its de­fence to the law­suit.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the AG’s Of­fice ap­pealed Rahim’s rul­ing but it was sub­se­quent­ly with­drawn be­fore it was heard by the Court of Ap­peal.

On May 2, 2019, Nel­son, Ram­lo­gan, and Ramdeen were slapped with three cor­rup­tion charges.

The trio was ac­cused of con­spir­ing to­geth­er to re­ceive, con­ceal and trans­fer crim­i­nal prop­er­ty name­ly the re­wards giv­en to Ram­lo­gan by Nel­son for be­ing ap­point­ed to rep­re­sent the State in sev­er­al cas­es; of con­spir­ing to­geth­er to cor­rupt­ly give Ram­lo­gan a per­cent­age of the funds, and of con­spir­ing with to make Ram­lo­gan mis­be­have in pub­lic of­fice by re­ceiv­ing the funds.

It was lat­er re­vealed that Nel­son had en­tered in­to a plea agree­ment with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) in ex­change for his tes­ti­mo­ny against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen.

In March, last year, High Court Judge Mal­colm Holdip up­held the plea agree­ment and is­sued a to­tal of $2.25 mil­lion in fines to Nel­son for his role in the al­leged con­spir­a­cy.

Holdip fined Nel­son $250,000 for al­leged­ly con­spir­ing with Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen, to breach Sec­tion 3 of the Pre­ven­tion of Cor­rup­tion Act, which crim­i­nalis­es cor­rup­tion through bribery.

He was fined $2 mil­lion for al­leged­ly con­spir­ing with the duo to breach Sec­tion 45 of the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act, which crim­i­nalis­es the con­ceal­ment of the pro­ceeds of crime.

Un­der his plea agree­ment, the con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice charge was dropped.

As part of his sen­tence, Holdip said that Nel­son, who had been in pro­tec­tive cus­tody dur­ing his vis­its to Trinidad for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and sen­tenc­ing, was free to re­turn to the Unit­ed King­dom while he cleared the fines un­der a 10-month court-ap­proved pay­ment plan.

He was al­so placed on a $250,000 bond to keep the peace for three years.

Last De­cem­ber, the DPP’s Of­fice in­di­cat­ed that it would be fil­ing in­dict­ments against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen di­rect­ly in the High Court in­stead of do­ing so af­ter a pro­tract­ed pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry, which could take sev­er­al months or over a year to com­plete.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi de­clined to com­ment on whether the pay­ments made to Nel­son dur­ing his tenure were re­lat­ed to the dis­con­tin­ued case be­fore Rahim.

He was care­ful to note that the doc­u­ments laid in Par­lia­ment did not specif­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fy the work per­formed by pri­vate at­tor­neys or the pe­ri­od it was done, on­ly the fees paid to them.

He al­so de­clined to com­ment on any per­ceived link to the pend­ing case against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen so as to avoid caus­ing any un­due pre-tri­al pub­lic­i­ty.

“That is a mat­ter in the DPP’s Of­fice. Go and ask him,” Al-Rawi said.

In­stead, Al-Rawi chose to fo­cus on the suc­cess­es achieved by his of­fice dur­ing his tenure as he point­ed to the sub­stan­tial re­duc­tion in the to­tal fees paid to pri­vate at­tor­neys.

In to­tal, be­tween 2015 and this year, $410.5 mil­lion was spent as com­pared to $494,848,294.22 be­tween 2010 and 2015.

Al-Rawi not­ed that of the mon­ey ex­pend­ed dur­ing his tenure, over $122 mil­lion was spent to clear debts to at­tor­neys in­curred dur­ing the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. Al­most $149 mil­lion was ex­pend­ed sole­ly for and at the dis­cre­tion of the DPP’s Of­fice.

Al-Rawi stat­ed that de­spite the min­i­mal bud­get, his of­fice was still able to op­er­a­tionalise sev­er­al pieces of im­por­tant leg­is­la­tion and es­tab­lish the Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment in ad­di­tion to pur­su­ing a ro­bust leg­isla­tive agen­da.

It was al­so able to re­tain com­pe­tent at­tor­neys to de­fend the State in 1,075 cas­es, Al-Rawi said.

The is­sue over the fees was raised in Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee (SFC) meet­ing, last month.

Al-Rawi ini­tial­ly de­clined to pub­lish the names of at­tor­neys who worked for the State and the fees they re­ceived as he claimed that he had re­ceived le­gal ad­vice from Se­nior Coun­sel Fyard Ho­sein over the is­sue.

Fol­low­ing the state­ment, po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj threat­ened le­gal ac­tion over the dis­clo­sure and his lawyers ques­tioned the ad­vice giv­en by Ho­sein.

“It cre­ates the per­cep­tion that you were seek­ing ad­vice to sup­port a pre­con­ceived po­si­tion against dis­clo­sure of this in­for­ma­tion from a per­son who would ben­e­fit fi­nan­cial­ly from the same,” Ma­haraj’s lawyer Ganesh Sa­roop said, in the let­ter ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia.

The doc­u­ments sub­se­quent­ly dis­closed showed that be­tween 2015 and last year, Ho­sein re­ceived al­most $17 mil­lion in le­gal fees as com­pared to a lit­tle over $1 mil­lion be­tween 2010 and 2015.

In dis­clos­ing the fees in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, Al-Rawi not­ed that Cab­i­net had made the de­ci­sion af­ter in­form­ing the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the pro­posed move.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that a pro­por­tion of the fees spent be­tween 2010 and 2015 may al­so be for ser­vices per­formed pri­or to the pe­ri­od as with the ar­rears in­her­it­ed by Al-Rawi.

The fees do not in­clude those in­curred by State boards and for Com­mis­sions of En­quiries.