sto­ries by

Derek Achong

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, is chal­leng­ing the de­ci­sion of a judge to grant po­lice of­fi­cers war­rants to wire­tap his phones as part of their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to wit­ness tam­per­ing al­le­ga­tions against him.

Ram­lo­gan’s con­sti­tu­tion­al law­suit, which has ef­fec­tive­ly put the start of the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry in­to crim­i­nal charges aris­ing out of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion on hold, came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Na­dia Kan­ga­loo yes­ter­day.

Ram­lo­gan is ac­cused of ob­struct­ing jus­tice by us­ing threats and bribery to per­suade Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) Di­rec­tor David West to not give ev­i­dence in his (Ram­lo­gan) defama­tion case against then-op­po­si­tion leader and cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

He is al­so ac­cused of mis­be­hav­ing in pub­lic of­fice by im­prop­er­ly en­deav­our­ing for West not to tes­ti­fy on Row­ley’s be­half.

The of­fences al­leged­ly oc­curred in Oc­to­ber 2014, while for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, who is al­so a wit­ness in the case, was serv­ing as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter. 
Short­ly af­ter for­mer act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams ini­ti­at­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­le­ga­tions in Feb­ru­ary 2015, then-prime min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ad­vised the Pres­i­dent to re­voke Ram­lo­gan and Grif­fith’s ap­point­ments. 
Ram­lo­gan was even­tu­al­ly charged with the of­fences in 2017.

Ac­cord­ing to his court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Ram­lo­gan is claim­ing his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to equal­i­ty be­fore the law and re­spect for pri­vate and fam­i­ly life were in­fringed when po­lice of­fi­cers in­ves­ti­gat­ing him ob­tained a se­ries of war­rants to wire­tap his phones.

His lawyers are con­tend­ing that the wrong pro­ce­dure for ob­tain­ing the war­rants un­der the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act (IO­CA) and the In­dictable Of­fences (Pre­lim­i­nary En­quiry) Act (IO­PEA) was used.

“The essence of these com­plaints is that the State mis­ap­plied pri­ma­ry leg­is­la­tion, name­ly the IO­CA to se­cure ac­cess to pri­vate telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions da­ta be­long­ing to the ac­cused and that up­on be­ing point­ed out, wrong­ful­ly and in bad faith mis­used the war­rant process un­der Sec­tion 5 of the IO­PEA,” his lawyers said.

They are al­so con­tend­ing that for­mer High Court Judge and cur­rent Ap­pel­late Judge Gillian Lucky could have been per­ceived to be bi­ased in grant­i­ng five of the war­rants.

They claimed that in the past, Ram­lo­gan and Jus­tice Lucky had a pub­lic dis­agree­ment while they were serv­ing as at­tor­ney gen­er­al and Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) Di­rec­tor re­spec­tive­ly. They con­tend­ed that Ram­lo­gan had crit­i­cised Jus­tice Lucky for al­leged­ly leak­ing a con­fi­den­tial PCA re­port on moves to re­vamp the “Fly­ing Squad” unit of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to then-op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi.

“There was a heat­ed and con­tro­ver­sial war of words,” they said, as they sug­gest­ed that Jus­tice Lucky should have had the case re­as­signed to an­oth­er judge.

They al­so claimed that Jus­tice Lucky rec­om­mend­ed West for the po­si­tion be­fore re­join­ing the Ju­di­cia­ry.

“It is fur­ther sub­mit­ted that if ap­par­ent bias ex­ists the pro­ceed­ings and any or­ders made are a nul­li­ty. The or­ders must be quashed re­gard­less of how cor­rect they might have been,” they said.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo ques­tioned whether Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle grant­ed a stay of the in­quiry when she grant­ed a re­quest to re­fer the case to the High Court last week.

Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo point­ed out that while Ram­lo­gan’s le­gal team claimed that Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle agreed to stay the in­quiry pend­ing the out­come of the con­sti­tu­tion­al case, such was not re­flect­ed in of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence sent to her.

British Queen’s Coun­sel Ed­ward Jenk­ins, who is lead­ing the le­gal team for the State, claimed he felt that case man­age­ment of the in­quiry could con­tin­ue while the case is on­go­ing be­fore Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo, as it (the case) can­not de­rail Ram­lo­gan’s con­tin­ued pros­e­cu­tion.

“Even if the ap­pli­ca­tion is suc­cess­ful that would not be the end of the pros­e­cu­tion’s case,” Jenk­ins said.

Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo ad­vised the par­ties to clar­i­fy the is­sue of the stay by con­sid­er­ing a tran­script of the hear­ing be­fore Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle and she set dead­lines for Ram­lo­gan’s le­gal team to file doc­u­ments in the case.

The case is ex­pect­ed to come up for hear­ing on No­vem­ber 4.

Jenk­ins was ini­tial­ly seek­ing a short­er ad­journ­ment, but Ram­lo­gan’s lawyer Kent Sam­lal in­di­cat­ed that time was need­ed for the British Queen’s Coun­sel hired by Ram­lo­gan to pur­sue the case, to be ad­mit­ted to prac­tice lo­cal­ly.

Ram­lo­gan and for­mer op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen face sep­a­rate charges over an al­leged le­gal fee kick­back scheme.

Those charges against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen arose out of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­most $1 bil­lion in le­gal fees 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 dealt with cor­rup­tion that al­leged­ly oc­curred un­der for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

Ram­lo­gan, Ramdeen and Ja­maica-born British Queen’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.

The pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry in­to those charges is al­so yet to com­mence be­fore Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle.