The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has agreed to re­turn at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen’s per­son­al items that were seized as part of its cor­rup­tion in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to him and for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC. 

On Wednes­day, Ramdeen’s lawyer Dayadai Har­ri­paul wrote to the Of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er re­quest­ing the re­turn of the items af­ter Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, dis­con­tin­ued the three cor­rup­tion charges against Ramdeen and Ram­lo­gan on Mon­day. 

In the cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Har­ri­paul claimed that the items were seized when of­fi­cers of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACIB) ex­e­cut­ed search war­rants at his of­fices in Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do and at his pri­vate res­i­dence in Palmiste on May 1, 2019.

The items in­clude three lap­tops, two tablets, a cheque­book, a bank trans­ac­tion record re­ceipt, and a dig­i­tal safe. 

Har­ri­paul not­ed that at the time of the search, Ramdeen chal­lenged the seizure of some items as they con­tained priv­i­leged ma­te­r­i­al from clients. 

She claimed that Ramdeen was told that he had to prove that the con­tents fell un­der at­tor­ney-client priv­i­lege and was not shown the search war­rants. 

As she sought to sum­marise the le­gal prin­ci­ples gov­ern­ing the pow­er of the po­lice to de­tain prop­er­ty as part of their in­ves­ti­ga­tions, Har­ri­paul ac­cept­ed that it is ex­ten­sive. 

How­ev­er, she point­ed out that the pow­ers had to be bal­anced against the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of cit­i­zens. 

“There is no gen­er­al pow­er in the po­lice, when they have law­ful­ly seized prop­er­ty which is there­after not the sub­ject of any charge and is clear­ly shown not to have been stolen, to re­tain that prop­er­ty as against the per­sons en­ti­tled to pos­ses­sion of it against some un­cer­tain fu­ture con­tin­gency,” she said. 

Ramdeen’s at­tor­ney al­so claimed that the po­lice should not keep hold of the items longer than nec­es­sary to com­plete their in­ves­ti­ga­tion. 

“If a copy will suf­fice, it should be made and the orig­i­nal re­turned,” she said.  

TTPS Le­gal Of­fi­cer Adi­ta Ram­du­lar re­spond­ed on Thurs­day and in­di­cat­ed that the items could be col­lect­ed at ACIB’s of­fice at In­de­pen­dence Square in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. 

In 2019, Ram­lo­gan, Ramdeen, and Ja­maican-born British King’s Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son were charged with 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. 

Short­ly af­ter be­ing charged, Nel­son en­tered in­to a plea agree­ment with the DPP’s Of­fice in ex­change for his tes­ti­mo­ny against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen.

In March 2020, 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.

In an­nounc­ing his de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue the case against the duo, Gas­pard claimed it was due to Nel­son re­fus­ing to tes­ti­fy be­fore the de­ter­mi­na­tion of his civ­il law­suit over the al­leged breach of an in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment with for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, un­der which he first im­pli­cat­ed Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen.