Mickela Panday
Once again, the issue of the payment of exorbitant fees to attorneys took centre stage in the media last week after it was revealed that $80 million of taxpayers' dollars was spent on lawyers fees in the commission of enquiry into the failure of Clico and the Hindu Credit Union (HCU). But this is not the first time the greed of a select few attorneys feeding at the trough has been highlighted.
Early last year, in a written response to a question posed by the then leader of the Opposition Dr Keith Rowley to the then attorney general Garvin Nicholas with respect to the payments for legal services made to people for the periods June 2010 to October 2014, the country was shocked by the revelations in Parliament about the exorbitant legal fees paid during that term by the Office of the Attorney General to certain favoured lawyers, local and foreign, including young local attorneys fresh from law school.
Embarrassed by these revelations, Nicholas and former minister Vasant Bharath attempted to do damage control by claiming that the document referred to in Parliament, which detailed the payments and which was prepared by public servants, contained some inaccuracies and duplications and, Mr Nicholas promised to bring a corrected statement of fees to Parliament, which, not surprisingly, was never done. Notwithstanding the protestations of Messrs Nicholas and Bharath, it was obvious that a feeding frenzy, unprecedented in respect of the huge amount of public funds spent, had begun in the Office of the AG almost immediately after the 2010 election.
And that was just the Office of the AG. There hasn't yet been a full account given of money spent on legal fees in the failed Petrotrin case against Malcolm Jones or the collapsed UTT case against Ken Julien. Or the millions and millions of dollars in legal fees by several other state bodies from 2010 to 2015, again to the same select few attorneys.
Then, of course, there were the commissions of enquiry into HCU/Clico, the 1990 coup attempt and the HDC Las Alturas development, the last of which has not yet ended. These commissions were appointed under an archaic Commissions of Enquiry Act, which gave the commissions with no real coercive powers to compel anyone to attend and to give evidence, save and except for an ineffectual section in the act which states that if a person who was summoned to appear failed to do so, a magistrate could impose the paltry fine of $2,500 on him.
It was obvious that the former administration, in failing to amend the act to give real power to any commission, was willing to throw away money on what would likely be a salacious but futile public spectacle.
Of the $80 million in legal fees, $9 million was paid to Commissioner Colman. Those legal fees were paid to lawyers who were counsel to the commission and a few others who, it appears, represented the commission in the Magistrate's Court seeking to have the $2,500 fine imposed on people who ignored summonses to attend. Apparently, one senior counsel got just under $1 million, one junior counsel just over half a million, and a third junior counsel got a quarter of a million dollars in legal fees to go after these people and to try to get a $2,500 fine imposed. Value for money? And what has become of those matters?
In the HCU/Clico enquiry well over $55 million was spent on English attorneys, one of whom alone pocketed over $23 million from our Treasury. Four junior local attorneys received, respectively, over $7 million, just under $6 million, just under $5 million, and just over $2 million in legal fees. Astonishingly, Commissioner Colman complained to the President that the delay in delivering the Clico report was due in large part to the fact that "the instructing attorney had to drop out for family reasons and of the three local attorneys, two proved to be so incompetent, inexperienced or lacking in any sense of professional responsibility that they became unavailable or only partially available." These two local attorneys, it turns out, were identified as the just under $6 million and just under $5 million chaps who were paid just under $11 million taxpayer dollars. But notwithstanding Commissioner Colman's view of them, these same two local attorneys were regularly retained by the AG and state entities over the five years of the PP administration and earned millions of dollars in legal fees.
And at the end of the day, what difference will the HCU/Clico report make? The 1990 Coup enquiry made no difference and many of the recommendations of the Uff Commission of Enquiry into the construction sector have been ignored or forgotten. Has the country to once again recoil at the wastage of public funds on public spectacle while a few lawyers laugh all the way to the bank?
This whole matter of legal fees under the last administration must be investigated to determine whether there was value for money and whether any ethical issues arise. Why were the competent attorneys in the Solicitor General's Chambers sidelined for young inexperienced favoured private attorneys?
Strange as it may be, this scandal deserves scrutiny by a commission of enquiry, albeit one set up under a revised modern act. Further, something needs to be done, including constitutional reform, to prevent any AG, without supervision or sanction, from giving out public funds to favoured lawyers without any limit, and from directing or controlling the legal work of state entities. Unfortunately, the recent revelation that under this new administration a certain lawyer was fully paid, within one day of submitting his substantial invoice to Udecott (headed by a family member), does not suggest that anything will really be done by the PNM Government to address this matter.