Two days af­ter cor­rup­tion charges were dis­con­tin­ued against him and for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen has de­mand­ed that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) re­turn his per­son­al items that were seized as part of its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the case.

Ramdeen’s lawyer Dayadai Har­ri­paul made the re­quest yes­ter­day in a let­ter sent to the Of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

In the cor­re­spon­dence, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Har­ri­paul claimed the items were seized when of­fi­cers of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau 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, Ramdeen’s at­tor­ney 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.

She al­so claimed 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.

Re­fer­ring to the fact that Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, dis­con­tin­ued the pros­e­cu­tion of her client on Mon­day, Har­ri­paul sug­gest­ed the items should be im­me­di­ate­ly re­leased.

“There can be no law­ful jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion of my client’s prop­er­ty,” she said.

She gave the TTPS un­til to­mor­row (Oc­to­ber 14) to re­spond to the re­quest and pro­vide jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the con­tin­ued de­ten­tion of the items be­fore she files a law­suit over the is­sue.

The charges against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen arose out of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­most $1 bil­lion in le­gal fees which was paid to pri­vate le­gal prac­ti­tion­ers, who rep­re­sent­ed the State and State com­pa­nies in le­gal pro­ceed­ings dur­ing Ram­lo­gan’s tenure be­tween 2010 and 2015.

The law­suits in­clud­ed sev­er­al for cor­rup­tion which al­leged­ly oc­curred un­der for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

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.