For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, is de­fend­ing Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard and his staff’s de­ci­sion not to move in­to a new of­fice on Park Street, Port-of-Spain, al­though the state had paid $55 mil­lion in rental for it.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj said af­ter launch­ing what he termed an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he con­clud­ed that the DPP (DPP) could not be blamed for the ex­pen­di­ture on the build­ing.

“The DPP did not have any in­put in the de­ci­sion made by the Gov­ern­ment to en­ter in­to the rental agree­ment of the build­ing which the Gov­ern­ment en­tered in­to in 2019,” Ma­haraj said in the 12-page state­ment.

“The DPP al­so did not have any in­put in the de­ci­sion of the Gov­ern­ment to pay any rentals for that build­ing af­ter the ten­an­cy ex­pired.

“The DPP al­so did not have any in­put in the de­ci­sion made af­ter the lease rental had ex­pired to con­sid­er re­new­ing the lease rental.”

Dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment meet­ing af­ter the 2024 Bud­get, it was dis­closed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour that $55 mil­lion was paid in rental fees for the build­ing since 2019, but the DPP and his staff nev­er moved in.

Fol­low­ing the rev­e­la­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so crit­i­cised the DPP for not oc­cu­py­ing the build­ing.

“We had to out­fit it to suit the de­part­ment that was go­ing to go in there. We did all that. Then we heard that there were se­cu­ri­ty is­sues, we spent mon­ey strength­en­ing the fa­cil­i­ty, bul­let­proof here, this that there. We did all of that. At the end of the day, af­ter we spent 55 mil­lion dol­lars, a pub­lic ser­vant could de­cide ‘ah not go­ing in there’. Some­thing has to be wrong with that! And as a tax­pay­er, I am in­censed that that could hap­pen in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

Re­ports had re­vealed that the DPP and his staff had con­cerns about the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty in the build­ing.

Ma­haraj agreed with this con­cern.

He said, “The rea­son the DPP did not oc­cu­py the build­ing was be­cause of the con­tents of the sev­er­al Spe­cial Branch Re­ports and the non-im­ple­men­ta­tion ful­ly of the rec­om­men­da­tions con­tained in those re­ports, be­cause if the DPP and his staff oc­cu­pied the build­ing in those cir­cum­stances it would have put their lives at huge risk.”

Ma­haraj quot­ed ex­cerpts from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Spe­cial Branch re­port af­ter a se­cu­ri­ty as­sess­ment was done in 2020.

One of the key points not­ed that the unit “found that the build­ing was lo­cat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 160 me­tres from the East Dry Riv­er area, which in it­self posed an in­her­ent risk. “The unit al­so found that this area was con­sid­ered a high crime area known for gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties, es­pe­cial­ly firearm of­fences. This unit al­so found that this dis­tance should be tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion in case of any threat and it is un­like­ly that a 9mm-cal­i­bre am­mu­ni­tion will be used by any po­ten­tial per­pe­tra­tors from this area, thus mak­ing the in­stalled glass in­ef­fec­tive against oth­er com­mon­ly utilised cal­i­bre am­mu­ni­tion such as 40-cal­i­bre, 45-cal­i­bre, 5.56 and 7.62 am­mu­ni­tion. The unit rec­om­mend­ed that a high­er lev­el bal­lis­tics proof­ing had to be used on all the glass win­dows on the east­ern side of the build­ing.”

Ma­haraj said the facts show that in Oc­to­ber 2022, the Spe­cial Branch Re­port, which was re­ceived in Ju­ly 2022, rec­om­mend­ed the con­struc­tion of con­crete block walls on spe­cif­ic ar­eas of the up­per floors of the build­ing as an added se­cu­ri­ty mea­sure.

He said based on his in­ves­ti­ga­tions, he was made aware of a site vis­it in Au­gust 2022 at which the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, DPP, Deputy DPP and oth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the min­istry were present. At the end of the vis­it, he said there were dis­cus­sions amongst them and they ar­rived at a con­sen­sus that the rec­om­men­da­tion for the con­struc­tion of the con­crete block wall in the re­port be would im­ple­ment­ed.

How­ev­er, on or around March 17, 2023, the in­for­ma­tion shows that the own­er re­siled and short­ly there­after, in­struct­ed that all fur­ther con­struc­tions or al­ter­ations to the build­ing should be stopped.

On the mat­ter of the lease agree­ment en­tered in­to in 2019, Ma­haraj said the facts show that the DPP did not know of the agree­ment and on­ly be­came aware of it some­time there­after.

The for­mer AG said in his es­ti­ma­tion, there are sev­er­al ques­tions that need to be an­swered.

“Why did the Gov­ern­ment en­ter in­to the rental agree­ment for the build­ing with­out it first ob­tain­ing from the ex­pert unit of the Spe­cial Branch of the TTPS, a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty risk as­sess­ment re­view of the build­ing? If the Gov­ern­ment had got­ten such a re­port in ad­vance of de­cid­ing to en­ter in­to the rental agree­ment, it would have been able to in­clude a term in the agree­ment that the own­er con­sent­ed to al­low the Gov­ern­ment to car­ry out all of the ren­o­va­tions/al­ter­ations/rec­om­men­da­tions to the build­ing in or­der to com­ply with the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Spe­cial Branch re­ports,” he said.

“Why did the Gov­ern­ment ser­vice the pay­ment of the elec­tric­i­ty and rental bills for the build­ing since the own­er hand­ed over the keys to the Min­istry in 2019, and be­fore there was any oc­cu­pa­tion of the build­ing by the DPP and his staff?”

Ma­haraj said the DPP has been ac­cused of not re­spond­ing to the is­sues about not oc­cu­py­ing the build­ing raised by the Gov­ern­ment, but, ac­cord­ing to him, the facts show these ac­cu­sa­tions do not have any foun­da­tion, are “in­ac­cu­rate” and “un­fair”.

He said in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion on the is­sue con­duct­ed by San­dra Jones, pur­suant to the de­ci­sion of Cab­i­net, one of the ques­tions she posed to the DPP was, “From a lead­er­ship po­si­tion and project man­age­ment per­spec­tives what are the lessons to be learnt by de­ci­sion-mak­ers with re­spect to the in­volve­ment of key stake­hold­ers from the plan­ning and im­ple­men­ta­tion stages of this project?”

The DPP’s an­swer was, “Some of the lessons which may be learned from the project are: (a) The time from se­lect­ing the build­ing to its even­tu­al out­fit­ting and readi­ness for oc­cu­pa­tion was in­or­di­nate­ly long; (b) The core busi­ness of the of­fice to be re­lo­cat­ed must be borne in mind in se­lect­ing a suit­able area for re­lo­ca­tion; (c) Safe­ty of the lives which oc­cu­py the pro­posed site must as­sume pri­ma­cy over any con­sid­er­a­tion, least of all the cost of the rental or lease; (d) Greater col­lab­o­ra­tion and more open com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the stake­hold­ers es­pe­cial­ly the Spe­cial Branch and the per­sons tasked with out­fit­ting the build­ing may have re­duced the de­lay. This is of par­tic­u­lar im­por­tance when the Spe­cial Branch could make the nec­es­sary rec­om­men­da­tions which would in­form the choice of ma­te­ri­als to be used and the pos­si­ble ar­eas of weak­ness in need of for­ti­fi­ca­tion from the stand­point of se­cu­ri­ty; and (e) Any build­ing or pro­posed site to house key stake­hold­ers in the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice should of ne­ces­si­ty in­clude a risk as­sess­ment re­port from the Spe­cial Branch at the stage of se­lec­tion and out­fit­ting.”

Con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia over his rea­son for deal­ing with the is­sue now and if he was rep­re­sent­ing any par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est in the mat­ter, Ma­haraj made it clear he was act­ing of his own vo­li­tion. He said he had been look­ing at the is­sue for the last two weeks and what was be­ing said about the DPP, and de­cid­ed to probe it be­cause he thought get­ting to the truth by look­ing at the facts was im­por­tant to the pub­lic.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to both the Gas­pard and AG Ar­mour for com­ments on Ma­haraj’s find­ings, but there was no re­ply up to press time.