Resh­ma Ra­goonath

En­er­gy ex­pert Dr Kr­ish­na Per­sad will have to an­swer the six fraud charges brought against him by Mo­ra Ven chair­man George Nicholas sev­en years ago. Se­nior Mag­is­trate Ra­jen­dra Ram­bachan yes­ter­day over­ruled a no-case sub­mis­sion made by Per­sad's at­tor­neys Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, and Justin Phelps, in­struct­ed by He­len Alves. In his five-page rul­ing, the San Fer­nan­do mag­is­trate said he did not agree with Pe­ter­son's sub­mis­sion that the pros­e­cu­tion's case was "man­i­fest­ly un­re­li­able."

Ram­bachan said sev­er­al of the mat­ters raised by the de­fence in their no-case sub­mis­sion should be left to be de­ter­mined by a ju­ry. "Noth­ing hap­pened in the ev­i­dence to so di­min­ish the case for the pros­e­cu­tion to ren­der it to the point coun­sel for the ac­cused con­tends for," Ram­bachan said. The pros­e­cu­tion is led by Queen's Coun­sel An­drew Mitchell, to­geth­er with Is­rael Khan, SC. They are as­sist­ed by at­tor­ney Kei­th Scot­land and in­struct­ed by Daniel Khan.

Per­sad is charged with six counts of fraud at Mo­ra Ven Lim­it­ed, a com­pa­ny he found­ed. The charges, a pri­vate pros­e­cu­tion, were brought against the Mo­ra Ven chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer by the com­pa­ny's chair­man, George Nicholas. The mat­ter is an on­go­ing le­gal bat­tle which start­ed in 2003 with an in­quiry in­to the fraud al­le­ga­tions. The mag­is­trate, re­fer­ring to ad­di­tion­al ev­i­dence and cross-ex­am­i­na­tion dur­ing the con­duct of the pros­e­cu­tion's case, which was re­opened twice, said it "en­tire­ly de­fined the is­sues be­tween the pros­e­cu­tion and de­fence ful­ly in­to ques­tions of fact for a ju­ry, at every turn. Ac­tu­al­ly, far from de­mol­ish­ing the case for the pros­e­cu­tion, it has made it more nu­anced."

Af­ter read­ing his rul­ing, Ram­bachan read the com­mit­tal cau­tion to Per­sad for each charge. Per­sad chose to re­main silent and in­di­cat­ed that he will be call­ing wit­ness­es to give ev­i­dence in his de­fence. The pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry was ad­journed to March 25 for 10 am. In 2003, Ram­bachan, the then pre­sid­ing mag­is­trate, had dis­charged Per­sad on all six charges on the ground that a pri­ma fa­cie case was not made out against him. His de­ci­sion was lat­er ap­pealed by Nicholas and the Court of Ap­peal up­held Ram­bachan's de­ci­sion. How­ev­er, the mat­ter was tak­en to the Privy Coun­cil and in 2009, the Law Lords re­mit­ted the in­quiry to Ram­bachan for fur­ther hear­ing of ev­i­dence.