Gail Alexan­der

Vic­to­ry af­ter 19 years of pur­suit, a beam­ing for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said yes­ter­day.

This af­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go emerged vic­to­ri­ous in the civ­il as­set for­fei­ture tri­al stem­ming from the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port cor­rup­tion probe which the PNM Gov­ern­ment had pur­sued in Mi­a­mi since 2004.

The win came fol­low­ing the case’s con­clu­sion in the Mi­a­mi Dade Cir­cuit Court, where Judge Reem­ber­to Di­az presided over an an­nounce­ment of the ver­dict around 6 pm.

The ju­ry in the mat­ter con­clud­ed that the three de­fen­dants—T&T busi­ness­man Steve Fer­gu­son, for­mer min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung and US busi­ness­man Raul Gutier­rez Jr—were li­able for US$32,385,988 in dam­ages suf­fered by T&T.

The court grant­ed the rack­e­teer­ing claims made by T&T, which tre­bled dam­ages.

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, who was in Flori­da since ear­ly March as T&T’s cor­po­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the case, con­firmed the out­come at 6.30 pm yes­ter­day.

Al-Rawi was pho­tographed on the steps of the court build­ing along with T&T’s US at­tor­neys in the mat­ter, the New York firm of White and Case, af­ter the win.

“This is a vic­to­ry for the peo­ple of T&T...” Al-Rawi de­clared.

The long­stand­ing ef­fort by Gov­ern­ment had been an at­tempt to re­coup ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$37 mil­lion from al­leged rack­e­teer­ing charges in the Pi­ar­co de­vel­op­ment project filed un­der the US’s Rack­e­teer­ing and In­flu­ence Cor­rup­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion Act (RI­CO). Gov­ern­ment had al­so sought to get triple the amount in dam­ages.

Yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi said, “The ju­ry found by clear and con­vinc­ing ev­i­dence that Fer­gu­son had vi­o­lat­ed Flori­da’s RI­CO statutes, and was al­so li­able for fraud and con­spir­a­cy to com­mit fraud. The ju­ry fur­ther found that the de­fen­dants caused over US$32 mil­lion in dam­ages to the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He added, “The net ef­fect of the ver­dict is that the State is the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the tre­bling of dam­ages au­to­mat­i­cal­ly and is al­so en­ti­tled to pre­judg­ment in­ter­est of at least US$25 mil­lion. Fi­nal judg­ment will be well in ex­cess of US$100 mil­lion.”

In the case in­volv­ing T&T’s At­tor­ney Gen­er­al ver­sus Birk Hill­man Con­sul­tants, Inc. “et al,” the State al­leged that de­fen­dants Fer­gu­son, Kuei Tung and Gutier­rez Jr had con­spired with oth­ers to cor­rupt the bid­ding process on two con­struc­tion pack­ages, as well as the main­te­nance con­tract for the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Af­ter ap­prox­i­mate­ly two hours’ de­lib­er­a­tion yes­ter­day, a ju­ry, com­pris­ing six res­i­dents of Mi­a­mi-Dade Coun­ty, found Fer­gu­son li­able for mul­ti­ple claims aris­ing from fraud per­pe­trat­ed in con­nec­tion with the re­de­vel­op­ment of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in the late 1990s and ear­ly 2000s.

The court ear­li­er found that de­fen­dants Kuei Tung and Gutier­rez Jr, the for­mer prin­ci­pal of Cal­maquip En­gi­neer­ing Cor­po­ra­tion—which pro­vid­ed the spe­cialised equip­ment at the air­port—were li­able. Cal­maquip was for­mer­ly head­quar­tered in Mi­a­mi.

Yes­ter­day’s out­come was the cul­mi­na­tion of the State’s ini­tial com­plaint filed in May 2004 by then-AG John Je­re­mie. By the time the State filed its Fifth Amend­ed Com­plaint in April 2007, the case in­clud­ed a to­tal of 56 de­fen­dants, in­clud­ing 11 in­di­vid­u­als, 12 cor­po­rate en­ti­ties and 33 in rem de­fen­dants (com­prised of bank ac­counts and tan­gi­ble as­sets).

In April 2016, the court grant­ed sum­ma­ry judg­ment against Gutier­rez, con­clud­ing he was li­able for fraud and vi­o­la­tions of Flori­da’s Rack­e­teer­ing and In­flu­enced Cor­rupt Or­ga­ni­za­tions statute. Gutier­rez plead­ed guilty in 2006 to charges of con­spir­a­cy to com­mit wire fraud and trans­porta­tion of stolen prop­er­ty in vi­o­la­tion of US fed­er­al law re­lat­ed to his in­volve­ment in the Pi­ar­co project.

In Oc­to­ber 2019, the court de­fault­ed Kuei Tung for re­fus­ing to at­tend his de­po­si­tion to an­swer ques­tions about the case. The de­fault re­sult­ed in li­a­bil­i­ty against Kuei Tung for the same claims. The court al­so de­ter­mined that Kuei Tung was li­able for con­spir­a­cy to com­mit fraud.

On March 6, Judge Di­az com­menced a four-week ju­ry tri­al to de­ter­mine li­a­bil­i­ty against Fer­gu­son and dam­ages for the oth­er de­fen­dants.

Open­ing state­ments were de­liv­ered by each par­ty on March 8. T&T, rep­re­sent­ed by its US coun­sel, White & Case LLP, pre­sent­ed 10 days of ev­i­dence against the de­fen­dants. The de­fen­dants fol­lowed with four days of their ev­i­dence.

Al-Rawi added, “In the com­ing weeks, pro­ceed­ings will be set to en­ter fi­nal judg­ment in ac­cor­dance with the ver­dict. The State will pur­sue its re­cov­ery of the award in due course.”

Foren­sic sleuth Hans Marschdorf as­sist­ed T&T

Sub­mis­sions in the case be­gan with Al-Rawi, who had sal­vaged the mat­ter when Gov­ern­ment en­tered of­fice. He’s been Gov­ern­ment’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive since the Flori­da court dis­qual­i­fied At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour last year, af­ter Ar­mour be­came T&T’s AG in March 2022.

Kuei Tung’s le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive ar­gued that Ar­mour had rep­re­sent­ed Kuei Tung in the Pi­ar­co mat­ter in T&T years ago.

Gov­ern­ment lost its ap­peal of Ar­mour’s dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion in Jan­u­ary. The court al­so dis­qual­i­fied US law firm Se­quor Law, which was work­ing on the mat­ter. White and Case was sub­se­quent­ly hired.

Wit­ness­es for T&T in­clud­ed ex-NIPDEC head Mar­garet Thomp­son, AATT’s le­gal ad­vis­er Karen Four­nel­li­er, dam­ages ex­pert An­dres Al­va and foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tor/as­set trac­er Hans Marschdorf. The lat­ter was part of foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tor Bob Lindquist’s team man­dat­ed by the past PNM Gov­ern­ment to han­dle in­ves­ti­ga­tions on the Pi­ar­co is­sue in its ear­li­est stages.

T&T’s case al­so in­volved wit­ness­es from bank­ing and oth­er sec­tors, use of al­leged bank and prop­er­ty records and de­po­si­tions from four US men found guilty in the Pi­ar­co mat­ter and who served jail time.

Sadiq Baksh among de­fence wit­ness­es

The de­fence pre­sent­ed sub­mis­sions in the last week. That in­clud­ed a wit­ness state­ment read out from for­mer UNC min­is­ter Sadiq Baksh. Oth­er wit­ness­es in­clud­ed Pe­ter Cateau and Neil Gau­dion.

Af­ter the mat­ter be­gan un­der the Patrick Man­ning PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, the Dr Kei­th Row­ley PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion pur­sued it, ac­cus­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment of not do­ing any­thing on the mat­ter.

Fer­gu­son, Kuei Tung and Gutier­rez Jr. were the on­ly three de­fen­dants left in the civ­il case from the orig­i­nal 2004 mat­ter.

The claim rep­re­sent­ed the on­ly tri­al in 19 years where Fer­gu­son and any UNC Cab­i­net mem­ber had faced a court in a tri­al - and not a pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry.

The mat­ter is the on­ly oth­er tri­al where T&T has ob­tained re­lief, ex­cept for the plea bar­gain by Ronald Birk in T&T. Most oth­er de­fen­dants plead­ed guilty, set­tled and served jail time. The Mi­a­mi case has been de­scribed as the longest-run­ning for a ma­jor white-col­lar crime case.