Richard Lord

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan says the Gov­ern­ment is hop­ing to take the bull by the horn and deal with many in­ci­dents of cor­rup­tion un­der the for­mer PNM regime. He said that dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at his of­fice on Wednes­day. "In the com­ing months, it is my hope that in every sin­gle month, for the rest of this year, one new case will be com­menced aris­ing out of cor­rup­tion scan­dals un­der the pre­vi­ous regime," Ram­lo­gan said. He said the Gov­ern­ment had no con­trol over the fil­ing of crim­i­nal charges against any­one. He said such charges could on­ly be laid af­ter the po­lice com­plet­ed their work and the mat­ter was passed to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).

He said it was the DPP "in his sole dis­cre­tion de­cides whether to prof­fer a crim­i­nal charge or not...We have no con­trol over that process." Ram­lo­gan said: "We are ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ed with the slow pace of those in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the Po­lice Ser­vice, and if they have com­plet­ed their in­ves­ti­ga­tions, in­deed with the slow pace of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process that may or may not lead to a crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. "There must be some kind of ac­count­abil­i­ty to the peo­ple of this coun­try and re­gard­less of whether it is yeah or nay, some­thing should be said as to what is tak­ing place in these in­ves­ti­ga­tions," he added. He said the Gov­ern­ment would not stand idly by "and al­low things to flow on au­to pi­lot."

The AG said the Gov­ern­ment would ex­plore civ­il reme­dies against those in breach of pub­lic of­fice un­der the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. Asked if he was on a witch-hunt, Ram­lo­gan said if there was to be a witch-hunt there must be witch­es. He said if there were witch­es he was mak­ing no apolo­gies for hunt­ing them down.