Da­reece Po­lo

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is is ques­tion­ing Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to re­tain Unit­ed King­dom bar­ris­ters in the le­gal pro­ceed­ings in­volv­ing Do­minic and Genevieve Hadeed be­fore any crim­i­nal charges have been laid, while a se­nior at­tor­ney has de­fend­ed the move as rou­tine in com­plex cas­es re­quir­ing spe­cial­ist ex­per­tise.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia over the week­end, Robin­son-Reg­is said while gov­ern­ments have long en­gaged for­eign lawyers when spe­cialised knowl­edge is need­ed, the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the Hadeed case were “ex­treme­ly strange.”

The Hadeeds re­main de­tained un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) dur­ing the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency and have not been charged with any of­fence.

“We are hear­ing talk about threats to kill the Prime Min­is­ter, to kill the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, but so far, charges have not been laid, so it’s very strange. So, I keep won­der­ing what these (UK) at­tor­neys are do­ing in the mean­time,” Robin­son-Reg­is said.

UK bar­ris­ters Sir James Ray­mond Ead­ie and Robert Stephen Strang were grant­ed per­mis­sion to rep­re­sent the State in pro­ceed­ings in­volv­ing the Hadeeds.

She ques­tioned whether the king’s coun­sel had been re­tained to ad­vise the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) or Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, not­ing that crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions fall un­der the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions’ (DPP) au­thor­i­ty.

“The oth­er ques­tion that I wish to ask is, if there are crim­i­nal mat­ters but no charges, who are these KCs work­ing for—the in­de­pen­dent DPP or the politi­cians? Be­cause the DPP’s of­fice is the one that deals with crim­i­nal charges. I haven’t heard a word from the DPP thus far.”

Robin­son-Reg­is al­so ques­tioned the de­ci­sion to re­tain mul­ti­ple UK KCs, point­ing to pre­vi­ous com­ments by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie crit­i­cis­ing spend­ing on for­eign le­gal ser­vices and pledg­ing to re­duce re­liance on over­seas lawyers.

She al­so raised con­cerns about the wider use of PDOs, warn­ing against de­ten­tion with­out charges be­ing used to in­tim­i­date cit­i­zens.

Robin­son-Reg­is said she agreed with for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of tar­get­ing in­di­vid­u­als based on per­ceived po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last Thurs­day.

She said the Hadeed mat­ter ap­peared to have po­lit­i­cal un­der­tones and agreed with Row­ley’s view that it looked “more of a vendet­ta rather than any­thing with sub­stance.”

The for­mer AG al­so re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) re­ceived il­lic­it fund­ing, say­ing the par­ty fi­nanced its ac­tiv­i­ties through fundrais­ing ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing raf­fles, its “buy a brick” cam­paign and do­na­tions from sup­port­ers.

The High Court has grant­ed the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) a Pre­lim­i­nary Un­ex­plained Wealth Or­der (PU­WO) com­pelling the PNM to ex­plain the source of fund­ing for the con­struc­tion of its Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters.

The or­der was grant­ed af­ter Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro au­tho­rised act­ing As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ram­dath Phillip to ap­ply to the High Court un­der Sec­tion 58(1) of the Civ­il As­set Re­cov­ery and Man­age­ment and Un­ex­plained Wealth Act, 2019. The ap­pli­ca­tion names the trustees of the PNM and the par­ty, rep­re­sent­ed by its gen­er­al sec­re­tary, as re­spon­dents.

For­eign coun­sel ‘not un­usu­al’

As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers pres­i­dent Saira Lakhan, how­ev­er, de­fend­ed the State’s de­ci­sion to re­tain UK bar­ris­ters, say­ing there was noth­ing un­usu­al about gov­ern­ments en­gag­ing ex­ter­nal coun­sel in com­plex le­gal mat­ters.

Lakhan said gov­ern­ments and pri­vate en­ti­ties have long re­tained lawyers from the UK and oth­er Caribbean ju­ris­dic­tions when spe­cial­ist ex­per­tise is re­quired.

She point­ed to the pros­e­cu­tion of for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and for­mer sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen as an ex­am­ple of a pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion en­gag­ing ex­ter­nal coun­sel.

Lakhan al­so dis­missed con­cerns about the cost of hir­ing for­eign lawyers, ar­gu­ing that over­seas coun­sel can some­times be more af­ford­able than lo­cal at­tor­neys.

“Some­times when you com­pare the cost of what we would have seen in the news­pa­pers, as to what we see with our lo­cal at­tor­neys, it is quite com­pa­ra­ble, and in some in­stances it’s even cheap­er,” Lakhan said.

She added that State en­ti­ties are en­ti­tled to con­sid­er a range of quo­ta­tions when se­lect­ing le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

“With State en­ti­ties now ask­ing for quotes, they have been able to get a range of quotes from both lo­cal at­tor­neys and for­eign at­tor­neys, and they’re en­ti­tled, if a quote comes in from a for­eign at­tor­ney that’s cheap­er, and that at­tor­ney is just as qual­i­fied, they are en­ti­tled to use the ser­vices ex­ter­nal­ly.”

On claims that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­volv­ing the Hadeeds is po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed, Lakhan urged cau­tion.

“At the end of the day, there’s the rule of law, and the state en­ti­ties who are pos­sessed of the in­for­ma­tion, they will make the de­ci­sions about the ev­i­dence and in­for­ma­tion be­fore them. And if it turns out lat­er on that they did not have the ap­pro­pri­ate ev­i­dence at that time, find­ings would be made by the ap­pro­pri­ate court. So, it’s too ear­ly to spec­u­late.”

The Gov­ern­ment has since re­tained two more UK bar­ris­ters to ap­pear in pro­ceed­ings on be­half of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

Le­gal No­tices pub­lished on Ju­ly 8 grant­ed An­tho­ny Nicholas George Peto, KC, and Thomas James Cleaver per­mis­sion to prac­tise law in Trinidad and To­ba­go in pro­ceed­ings be­fore the High Court and Court of Ap­peal con­cern­ing the en­force­ment of laws re­lat­ing to un­ex­plained wealth, pro­ceeds of crime and any oth­er con­nect­ed mat­ters.

How­ev­er, it re­mains un­clear whether Peto and Cleaver will al­so ap­pear in the Hadeed mat­ter.

Ques­tions seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion were sent to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie but had not been an­swered up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.