Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

A copy of Vin­cent Nel­son's no­tarised state­ment in which he out­lines de­tails sur­round­ing the le­gal fees kick­back scheme al­leged­ly in­volv­ing Anand Ram­lo­gan and Ger­ald Ramdeen was ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian.

This doc­u­ment was dis­closed by the State to Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen's le­gal team.

We reached out to both Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen on Thurs­day and Fri­day via What­sApp and text mes­sag­ing ask­ing for a com­ment on the al­le­ga­tions con­tained in the four-page doc­u­ment.

Ramdeen called on Thurs­day con­firm­ing he and Ram­lo­gan had the doc­u­ment be­ing ref­er­enced and that they would con­fer be­fore re­spond­ing.

Ram­lo­gan read What­sApp mes­sages sent twice on Thurs­day morn­ing and evening and an­oth­er text mes­sage was al­so sent to Ramdeen ask­ing if they had any feed­back con­cern­ing the doc­u­ment, but they nev­er an­swered. At­tempts were al­so made on Fri­day via What­sApp and text mes­sag­ing, but there was still no re­sponse.

Both Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen, who were ar­rest­ed and charged with the of­fences in May 2019, de­nied wrong­do­ing and plead­ed not guilty to the con­spir­a­cy and mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice charges. The mat­ter has now been dis­con­tin­ued against both men.

This is the no­tarised state­ment signed by Vin­cent Nel­son on Oc­to­ber 26, 2017:

1. The de­mand by Ram­lo­gan for pay­ment: In late 2010 I was in­vit­ed to meet Anand Ram­lo­gan to dis­cuss un­der­tak­ing le­gal work on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment. The in­vi­ta­tion was made via my Cham­bers, 39, Es­sex Cham­bers, Lon­don. Pri­or to this in­vi­ta­tion, I did not know of, nor met, Anand Ram­lo­gan.

2. I can­not re­call the pre­cise date I met Anand Ram­lo­gan. How­ev­er, it was in the last quar­ter of 2010. In that meet­ing, he in­formed me of "foren­sic probes" he was un­der­tak­ing and asked me to lead the Petrotrin "probe". I ac­cept­ed, sub­ject to the agree­ment of fees by his Cham­bers' di­rec­tor. There was no dis­cus­sion of the quan­tum of fees, nor any sug­ges­tion, at this stage, by Ram­lo­gan that I should pay him any part of the fees to be paid to me.

3. I re­turned to Trinidad on 5 No­vem­ber 2011 to com­mence work on the "foren­sic probe". I was sched­uled to leave on 13 No­vem­ber. Dur­ing that vis­it, Ger­ald Ramdeen in­formed me that Anand Ram­lo­gan wished to have a meet­ing with me con­cern­ing the "probes". The meet­ing took place in the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice. In at­ten­dance was (sic) Ram­lo­gan, Ramdeen, and my­self. The on­ly sub­ject of con­ver­sa­tion at the meet­ing "raised for the first time", was the de­mand by Ram­lo­gan for pay­ment by me to Ram­lo­gan of a per­cent­age of the fees I was to re­ceive from en­gage­ment "probes". It was made clear that this was not a re­quest but a re­quire­ment.

4. Af­ter some dis­cus­sion I agreed to pay Ram­lo­gan ten per cent of the gross fees re­ceived by me from any work un­der­tak­en by him for the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Ram­lo­gan want­ed the funds to be paid to Ramdeen who would then "make avail­able" the funds to Ram­lo­gan. In our dis­cus­sion, I raised the fact that this could cause prob­lems for all in­volved if it was dis­cov­ered. Ram­lo­gan said that to dis­guise the fact that the funds were be­ing paid to him, Ramdeen and I should agree to the "fic­tion" that the pay­ments were be­ing made to Ramdeen as part of an agree­ment where­by I was part of Ramdeen's cham­bers. Notwith­stand­ing this "fic­tion", it should be em­pha­sised that at no time was I ever part of Ramdeen's cham­bers. I nev­er used any of the fa­cil­i­ties of his cham­bers and vis­it­ed it no more than five times dur­ing the en­tire pe­ri­od I worked in Trinidad over a pe­ri­od of four years. The "fic­tion", was pure­ly to dis­guise the re­al rea­son for pay­ment to Ramdeen.

5. Pay­ment to Ramdeen's bank ac­count: All pay­ments by me were made to the fol­low­ing ac­count: (List­ed is the bank ac­count num­ber of Ger­ald Ramdeen and oth­er per­ti­nent de­tails).

6. The pay­ments made. Pay­ments were made from my Natwest Bank UK ac­count and Sagi­cor Ja­maican Bank ac­counts. The pay­ments were made as fol­lows:

Natwest 21/12/11-£ 32,527.00

Natwest 30/07/12- £ 10,000.00 (in­clu­sive of a trans­fer fee of £20–de­duct­ed by Natwest Bank–net paid £9,980.00)

Natwest 01/08/12- £ 10,000.00 (in­clu­sive of a trans­fer fee of £20–de­duct­ed by Natwest Bank–net paid £9,980.00)

Natwest 08/08/12- £9,039.50 (in­clu­sive of a trans­fer fee of £39.50 de­duct­ed by Natwest Bank–net paid £9,000.00)

Natwest 07/11/12 - £5,032.50 (in­clu­sive of a trans­fer fee of £32.50 de­duct­ed by Natwest Bank–net paid £5,000.00)

Natwest 12/11/12 - £4,039.50 (in­clu­sive of a trans­fer fee of £39.50 de­duct­ed by Natwest Bank–net paid £4000.00)

Natwest 12/06/13 - £10,000.00 (in­clu­sive of a trans­fer fee of £30.00 de­duct­ed by Natwest Bank–net paid £9,970.00)

Natwest 13/06/13 - £10,000.00 (in­clu­sive of a trans­fer fee of £30.00 de­duct­ed by Natwest Bank–net paid £9,970.00)

Natwest 14/06/13 - £10,000.00 (in­clu­sive of a trans­fer fee of £30.00 de­duct­ed by Natwest Bank–net paid £9,970.00)

Natwest 18/06/13 - £10,000.00 (in­clu­sive of a trans­fer fee of £30.00 de­duct­ed by Natwest Bank–net paid £9,970.00)

Sagi­cor Bank Ja­maica 05/09/14–£50,000.00

Sagi­cor Bank Ja­maica 25/09/14–£40,000.00

TO­TAL £200,367.00 (Ex­clud­ing bank charges)

7. How were the funds "made avail­able" to Ram­lo­gan?

I was in­formed by Ramdeen that the funds were with­drawn in cash from Ramdeen's re­cip­i­ent bank ac­count above and giv­en to Ram­lo­gan in cash. I re­call that Ramdeen once told me that Ram­lo­gan had so much cash that when Ram­lo­gan was restor­ing his house in the south of Trinidad he thought noth­ing of in­struct­ing builders to pull down new­ly in­stalled struc­tures and start with a dif­fer­ent de­sign be­cause Ram­lo­gan did not like it or be­cause he had changed his mind as to how we would like the re­stored build­ing to look.

8. Who else paid mon­ey to Ram­lo­gan?

Name called (of King's Coun­sel at­tor­ney 1), to my knowl­edge, paid monies which were re­ceived by Ram­lo­gan. As far as I am aware, (name called of King's Coun­sel at­tor­ney 1) brought the funds in­to Trinidad by means of Bankers' Drafts when he ar­rived in Trinidad so that the funds could not be traced back to him. I al­so re­mem­ber that (name called of King's Coun­sel at­tor­ney 1) was par­tic­u­lar­ly in­sis­tent that he was met by VIP pro­to­col on ar­rival be­cause he had these drafts with him. As far as I am aware these drafts were giv­en to Ramdeen for de­posit in his ac­count and for him to make on­ward pay­ments to Ram­lo­gan in cash. The sums paid by (name called of King's Coun­sel at­tor­ney 1) were 10 per cent of fees re­ceived af­ter the de­duc­tion of (name called of King's Coun­sel at­tor­ney 1) costs.

9. I was in­formed by Ramdeen that (name called of King's Coun­sel at­tor­ney 2) al­so agreed to make pay­ments to Ram­lo­gan. In 2013/2014 there was some falling out be­tween (name called of King's Coun­sel at­tor­ney 2) and Ram­lo­gan due to the fact that (name called of King's Coun­sel at­tor­ney 2) had not paid the en­tire sum that was agreed by him as payable to Ram­lo­gan from fees re­ceived. I am not aware how the sums that were paid by (name called of King's Coun­sel at­tor­ney 2) were paid to Ram­lo­gan whether through Ramdeen or oth­er­wise.

10. I was al­so in­formed by Ramdeen that (name called of lo­cal at­tor­ney) al­so agreed to make pay­ments. How­ev­er, I am not aware of how or when such pay­ments were made.

Signed by me:

Vin­cent Nel­son

Al­so at­tached to the no­tarised state­ment were sev­er­al wire trans­fers of the bank­ing trans­ac­tions as out­lined by Vin­cent Nel­son.