Denyse Renne

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj says the de­ci­sion and rea­son­ing of the Gov­ern­ment in con­duct­ing a com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the col­lapse of in­sur­ance gi­ant Cli­co re­main "ques­tion­able." Of ma­jor con­cern, Ma­haraj said, were the ut­ter­ances of AG Anand Ram­lo­gan that the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the col­lapse should be made pub­lic.

This was de­spite a warn­ing from Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard, SC, that a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the is­sue has start­ed. Ma­haraj, in an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, said when the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship took over gov­er­nance, they knew that foren­sic ex­pert Bob Lindquist had ex­am­ined the af­fairs and op­er­a­tions of Cli­co.

"The Gov­ern­ment al­so knew there was a pos­si­bil­i­ty of per­sons be­ing charged with crim­i­nal of­fences based on the Lindquist re­port," Ma­haraj said. Say­ing it was well known that the com­mis­sion of en­quiry was a pub­lic af­fair and that ev­i­dence giv­en was re­pro­duced in the me­dia, Ma­haraj said any­one charged with crim­i­nal of­fences aris­ing out of the in­quiry could ap­ply to the courts and have the pro­ceed­ings de­clared an abuse of process.

It was on­ly last week that Gas­pard an­nounced that the po­lice had start­ed a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­duct of in­di­vid­u­als and cor­po­rate en­ti­ties in­volved in the col­lapse of Cli­co and re­lat­ed com­pa­nies. In a state­ment, Gas­pard said for the me­dia to "jeop­ar­dise, hin­der or oth­er­wise prej­u­dice the in­ves­ti­ga­tion or any pos­si­ble pro­ceed­ings might amount to a con­tempt of court."

The DPP said: "I re­main mind­ful of com­pet­ing pub­lic-in­ter­est fac­tors, in­clud­ing the fair-tri­al rights of po­ten­tial de­fen­dants, the free­dom of the press and the re­quire­ment of open jus­tice." Re­fer­ring to a re­cent in­ter­view which quot­ed the AG as say­ing it was in the pub­lic in­ter­est for all the facts in the Cli­co mat­ter to be ful­ly ven­ti­lat­ed, Ma­haraj said Ram­lo­gan would have known the pre­vi­ous gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank, Ewart Williams, had a copy of the Lindquist re­port.

He said it was as­tound­ing that the AG has made a pub­lic state­ment in which he is con­tend­ing that the Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion is for all of the ev­i­dence to come out in­to the pub­lic, de­spite the DPP in­di­cat­ing that a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der way.

Sug­gest­ing this could be an­oth­er Sec­tion 34 in the mak­ing, Ma­haraj said it was pub­lic knowl­edge that "the ma­jor play­ers in the CL Fi­nan­cial group are close to the PP Gov­ern­ment and ac­tu­al­ly as­sist­ed in fi­nanc­ing their po­lit­i­cal cam­paign." The for­mer AG said the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion ought to be ac­count­able in how it han­dles mat­ters, es­pe­cial­ly those which in­volve the pub­lic purse and crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.