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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Saddam names lawyers who earned millions under PNM govt

by

Dareece Polo
26 days ago
20250619
Minister of Legal Affairs, Minister in the Ministry of Agriculture, Land and FisheriesSaddam Hosein speaks in Parliament yesterday.

Minister of Legal Affairs, Minister in the Ministry of Agriculture, Land and FisheriesSaddam Hosein speaks in Parliament yesterday.

COURTESY: OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENT

Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein has slammed the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), al­leg­ing that more than $1 bil­lion in le­gal fees in the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice was fun­nelled to friends, fi­nanciers and po­lit­i­cal al­lies of for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s par­ty over their near­ly 10 years in of­fice.

His ex­plo­sive claims came as he de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s $3.14 bil­lion mid-year bud­get ad­just­ment dur­ing yes­ter­day’s par­lia­men­tary de­bate to adopt the re­port of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee.

Ho­sein dropped a po­lit­i­cal bomb­shell dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, nam­ing high-pro­file le­gal fig­ures—in­clud­ing two for­mer PNM at­tor­neys gen­er­al, two sit­ting in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors, an op­po­si­tion MP, and a per­son­al as­so­ciate of Row­ley—as be­ing among 44 at­tor­neys who col­lec­tive­ly re­ceived mil­lions in state briefs.

He iden­ti­fied Regi­nald Ar­mour SC and Rus­sel Mar­tineau as the for­mer AGs, sen­a­tors Si­mon de la Bastide and An­tho­ny Vieira, Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land, and Gilbert Pe­ter­son SC—whom he de­scribed as Row­ley’s “golf­ing friend”—as ben­e­fi­cia­ries of a bil­lion-dol­lar le­gal pay­out un­der the PNM.

“This is where the mon­ey gone. So that when peo­ple come for a food card and when peo­ple come for a house and they can’t build a house, they were spend­ing $1 bil­lion feed­ing their friends, their fam­i­lies and their fi­nanciers in one min­istry alone, ex­clud­ing all of the state en­ter­pris­es, ex­clud­ing the oth­er min­istries. This is where they were feed­ing at the trough. They were mak­ing deals on the golf course,” he said.

He al­so slammed a pro­posed deal un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion to re­lo­cate the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment to Gulf City Mall, warn­ing that it would bur­den tax­pay­ers with $162,000 in month­ly rent and an ad­di­tion­al $6.2 mil­lion over five years—av­er­ag­ing $104,000 per month—for out­fit­ting the space.

Ho­sein said 127 con­tracts were award­ed un­der the na­tion­al re­for­esta­tion and wa­ter­shed re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme, and near­ly 80 per cent of them con­tracts were re­newed on the Fri­day be­fore the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Ho­sein, sev­er­al of the con­trac­tors have di­rect ties to the PNM. He al­so claimed a mar­tial arts school was teach­ing kung fu at the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, where he said 147 con­tracts were award­ed be­tween for­mer min­is­ters Kaz­im Ho­sein and Faris Al-Rawi.

He claimed there were com­pa­nies linked to Row­ley, Ho­sein, Al-Rawi and for­mer PNM sen­a­tor Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh Sook­lal.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Row­ley, Ho­sein, Al-Rawi and Sagram­s­ingh Sook­lal for a re­sponse but none was pro­vid­ed up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.

Mean­while, Port of Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young strong­ly re­ject­ed claims of mis­man­age­ment and waste at the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice made by Ho­sein.

“If there is any cor­rup­tion with re­spect to any of those fig­ures called, so be it. Let the chips fall where they may,” Young stat­ed de­fi­ant­ly.

“One thing I stand here care­ful, cog­nisant of and fear­less­ly I can say, out of the PNM at­tor­ney gen­er­al over that pe­ri­od of time be­tween 2015 and 2025, there will be ab­solute­ly no kick­back of le­gal fees from any at­tor­ney to any PNM at­tor­ney gen­er­al.”

Young de­fend­ed the le­gal fees as nec­es­sary costs to de­fend the state, re­call­ing that over 30 claims dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic had cost tax­pay­ers more than $16 mil­lion adding to the stag­ger­ing bills Ho­sein cit­ed.

He al­so blamed Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) re­quests filed by those linked to the rul­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress for in­flat­ing le­gal fees.

He fur­ther ques­tioned whether At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie’s re­marks in­di­cat­ed his in­ten­tion to dis­con­tin­ue the Pi­ar­co Air­port mat­ter and oth­er cas­es aimed at re­cov­er­ing funds for the state.

On con­tract awards, Young em­pha­sised that pub­lic pro­cure­ment laws re­main in ef­fect, stress­ing, “Min­is­ters do not award con­tracts, nei­ther do boards as there is a process that is out of their hands.”

He con­clud­ed with a point­ed mes­sage to the pub­lic: “To come here and make broad brushed al­le­ga­tions or sug­ges­tions of cor­rup­tion when that leg­is­la­tion is very much and still in play, I tell the pop­u­la­tion let your hearts not be trou­bled. Let us see where it goes. If there is any­thing there what­so­ev­er, then there is le­gal re­course.”

Lawyers and le­gal en­ti­ties who earned State briefs

White & Case (US based firm) - $157M

Rus­sel Mar­tineau, SC (for­mer PNM at­tor­ney gen­er­al) - $38M

Fyard Ho­sein, SC - $33.9M

Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC - $29.3M

Claude H Den­bow, SC - $27.6M

Se­quor Law (US based firm) - $23.2M

Ed­monds Mar­shall McMa­hon - $20.7M

Ravi Ra­j­coomar, SC - $16.8M

Dou­glas Mendes, SC $15.7M

Michael Quam­i­na, SC $15.4M

Ker­wyn Gar­cia, SC (First Gen­tle­man) - $14.6M

Deb­o­rah Peake, SC - $13.8Mj

Ed­ward Jenk­ins, KC - $13.7M

Ne­tram Kow­lessar - $13.3 M

Regi­nald Ar­mour ,SC (for­mer PNM at­tor­ney gen­er­al) - $13.2M

Dhar­men­dra Pun­wasee - $11.3M

Vin­cent Nel­son, KC - $10.9M

Vanes­sa Gopaul - $10.2M

Tama­ra Toolsie - $10.2M

Roger Kawals­ingh - $9.3M

Ami­rah Ra­haman - $9.2M

Ter­rence Bharath, SC (for­mer An­gos­tu­ra chair­man) - $7.7M

Raphael Ad­jod­ha - $7.6M

Elaine Greene, SC- $5.7M

Ian Ben­jamin, SC - $5.1M

An­drew Dalip - $4.9M

Ja­son Mootoo - $4.8M

Jerome Ra­jku­mar - $4.1M

Kei­th Scot­land, SC - $3.3M

Gre­go­ry Delzin, SC - $3.2M

Justin Phelps, SC - $2.77M

JD Sel­l­i­er (Caribbean law firm) - $2.5M

Rol­ston Nel­son, SC (PNM rec­om­men­da­tion for Pres­i­dent in 2013) - $2.3M

Mar­tin Daly, SC - $2.2M

An­tho­ny Bul­lock - $2.1M

M G Daly & Part­ners - $1.9M

Ravi Nan­ga, SC - $1.9M

Fitzwilliam, Stone, Fur­ness-Smith & Mor­gan (lo­cal firm) - $1.7M

Pol­lon­ais, Blanc, de la Bastide & Jacelon (lo­cal firm) - $1.5M

Ravi Heffes-Doon - $1.5M

Christie-Anne Mor­ris-Al­leyne - $2.4M ($800K re­tain­er each for three de­part­ments at AG’s of­fice)

Si­mon de la Bastide, SC (In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor) - $2M

An­tho­ny Vieira, SC (In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor) - $257,000


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