An­oth­er big job for in­com­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher is shap­ing up.

The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is mov­ing to write Hare­wood-Christo­pher to get the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) probe At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour’s be­hav­iour in the Pi­ar­co Air­port civ­il pro­ceed­ings case in Mi­a­mi, af­ter US courts re­cent­ly dis­qual­i­fied Ar­mour from the mat­ter.

Plus, the UNC’s al­so con­sid­er­ing ap­proach­ing the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T to ex­am­ine Ar­mour’s con­duct in the case al­so.

The par­ty, which has a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against Ar­mour in the Par­lia­ment, will al­so be boy­cotting Par­lia­ment ac­tiv­i­ty when­ev­er he gets up to speak there.

UNC Sen­ate leader Wade Mark con­firmed this at yes­ter­day’s Op­po­si­tion me­dia brief­ing in Port-of-Spain.

“The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al needs a bush bath ...!” Mark said.

Mark slammed Ar­mour on al­leged mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the fact in Ar­mours af­fi­davits in the Mi­a­mi civ­il mat­ter and al­so on the con­duct of lit­i­ga­tion in the re­cent case where nine for­mer ac­cused in the Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man kid­nap­ping/mur­der case were award­ed over $20 mil­lion af­ter the AG’s Of­fice failed to file a de­fence.

Ar­mour, claim­ing a file on the case went miss­ing as soon as it was de­liv­ered to his of­fice, has or­dered a probe by re­tired Jus­tices Stan­ley John and Rol­ston Nel­son.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Mark cit­ed the re­cent Mi­a­mi Ap­peal Court judge­ment which up­held last year’s Mi­a­mi Cir­cuit Court dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion of Ar­mour (and Se­quor Law) from the Pi­ar­co Air­port ter­mi­nal civ­il case in that ju­ris­dic­tion.

Cit­ing ar­gu­ments in the ap­peal, Mark al­leged Ar­mour “lied” in his af­fi­davits, since he wasn’t a mere note-tak­er in the Pi­ar­co mat­ter here in T&T. He added that it was un­eth­i­cal and a con­flict of in­ter­est for Ar­mour to have rep­re­sent­ed peo­ple (ex-min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung) in the first Pi­ar­co case years ago, and now rep­re­sent the state in the Pi­ar­co civ­il mat­ter against them in Mi­a­mi.

“He breached the rules of el­e­men­tary ethics gov­ern­ing the Mi­a­mi case. I ask the Law As­so­ci­a­tion - there’s a pro­vi­sion deal­ing with the Code of Ethics and that’s part of the code. What will LATT do about this AG who’s vi­o­lat­ing this code gov­ern­ing lawyers who are LATT mem­bers?” he asked.

Mark said it would be con­sid­ered—with the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s ap­proval—if UNC would write LATT’s pres­i­dent on Ar­mour.

“We al­so call on the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­duct of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in the pro­ceed­ings in the Mi­a­mi Cir­cuit and Ap­peal Courts,” he said.

“This mat­ter is so se­ri­ous the CoP has to in­ves­ti­gate to de­ter­mine if this At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has com­mit­ted an of­fence that’s equiv­a­lent to mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice. Po­lice need to probe and de­ter­mine this,” Mark said, adding he’d seek the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s ap­proval on send­ing a let­ter to the CoP.

Mark de­mand­ed the cost to tax­pay­ers of the loss of the Mi­a­mi case in 2022, plus last week’s ap­peal.

“Ar­mour needs to pay this out of his sav­ings or do the right thing and re­sign im­me­di­ate­ly,” he said.

On the award for the nine men, Mark said para­graph 32 of the judg­ment stat­ed the men claimed $3 mil­lion but rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the AG’s Of­fice sug­gest­ed $1.2M— and couldn’t have rec­om­mend­ed that sum un­less they had an AG’s con­sent.

Dis­miss­ing a “miss­ing file,” Mark said state at­tor­neys would have had to have had a file to ar­gue the mat­ter in court.

He al­so slammed the hir­ing of John and Nel­son as “jobs for the boys “whom tax­pay­ers would have to pay.”

MP David Lee said the file is­sue should have been in­ves­ti­gat­ed by TTP .

Mark claimed no de­fence was al­so en­tered by the AG’s Of­fice in cas­es in­volv­ing PNM’s Ash­ton Forde, An­drea Cham­bers and Elvin Ed­wards, Mal­colm Jones; and there was al­so no ap­peal in the AV Drilling judg­ment.

Lee: We sup­port­ed Er­la over­whelm­ing­ly

UNC whip David Lee al­so re­fut­ed some me­dia re­ports that the Op­po­si­tion wasn’t in sup­port of Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher for Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

“All our MPs present in the Low­er House over­whelm­ing­ly vot­ed for and sup­port­ed her ap­point­ment. Our con­cerns were voiced by Dr (Roodal) Mooni­lal when he replied to the mo­tion and it’s heart­en­ing to see in the Sun­day Guardian, that Mrs Christo­pher say­ing she’d re­sist all po­lit­i­cal over­tures. That was our con­cern when we made our pre­sen­ta­tion,” Lee said.

“She has a very good re­sume. So, we wish Mrs Christo­pher all the best in her po­si­tion as CoP and she has the Op­po­si­tion’s sup­port. But we’ll be keep­ing a watch­ful eye on the ad­min­is­tra­tion and how they sup­port her in her new role as CoP.”