Denyse Renne

Did T&T ben­e­fit from the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Sir An­tho­ny Col­man Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the col­lapse of Cli­co?For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, says the en­quiry, which was com­mis­sioned by the Gov­ern­ment, did more harm than good and has the po­ten­tial to prej­u­dice the on­go­ing crim­i­nal probe by po­lice of­fi­cers. He al­so said it was "a big waste of tax­pay­ers mon­ey."

Ma­haraj said the en­quiry could al­so form the base for at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing those im­pli­cat­ed to have suf­fi­cient grounds to ar­gue a range of le­gal points which could see the cas­es against them col­laps­ing, should the mat­ter reach to court.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, Ma­haraj said the en­quiry should not have oc­curred in the first place and the mil­lions of dol­lars spent to fa­cil­i­tate it should have in­stead been spent on re­sources for both the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) and the po­lice "to re­tain the ser­vices of a foren­sic team to deal with the mat­ter."

Ma­haraj said fol­low­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship an­nounce­ment of the Cli­co/HCU en­quiry, he protest­ed say­ing those im­pli­cat­ed would have a "per­fect de­fence.""At the time, I said the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry will not be in the pub­lic in­ter­est. Cana­di­an Foren­sic ac­coun­tant Bob Lindquist had al­ready done a foren­sic ex­am­i­na­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions sur­round­ing Cli­co and the re­port pro­duced im­pli­cat­ed per­sons."

Lindquist was paid $82.8 mil­lion for work he did for Cen­tral Bank un­der the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion be­tween 2010 to 2011.The se­nior coun­sel said the pub­lic did not ben­e­fit from the en­quiry in which mil­lions of dol­lars in tax­pay­ers monies were spent in le­gal fees.

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment as to the amount of monies spent in le­gal fees dur­ing the en­quiry, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said: "There is a ques­tion on the Or­der Pa­per for an­swer in Par­lia­ment from the Op­po­si­tion and I will an­swer that ques­tion in Par­lia­ment."Sources say mil­lions of dol­lars have been spent on the le­gal teams which had been re­tained by Cen­tral Bank and al­so coun­sel for the lone com­mis­sion­er, Sir An­tho­ny Col­man.

The at­tor­neys seek­ing the in­ter­ests of Col­man were hand-picked by Ram­lo­gan, while sources say Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai, act­ing on the ad­vice of Ram­lo­gan, re­tained British Queen's Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son, at­tor­neys Jagdeo Singh and San Fer­nan­do-based at­tor­ney Roger Kawals­ingh to rep­re­sent Cen­tral Bank.

"The AG seems to be more in­ter­est­ed in spend­ing mil­lions in le­gal fees than seek­ing the pub­lic's in­ter­est. What is worse is that he's (AG) giv­ing the im­pres­sion he has no re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in en­sur­ing the sum­mons is served on Duprey and Mon­teil," Ma­haraj said.Ma­haraj said as a lawyer the AG must have known that the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry Act was out­dat­ed and could not have been used to force peo­ple to tes­ti­fy.

"There­fore, he would have known there could have been no ac­tion tak­en, bring­ing or cit­ing peo­ple as wit­ness­es if they de­cid­ed they were not pre­pared to tes­ti­fy, or not even pre­pared to at­tend the in­quiries."Ma­haraj said the AG can­not now blame the of­fice of the DPP, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, or the po­lice "for the mess which he (Ram­lo­gan) has put this coun­try in, in re­spect of this mat­ter."

He said Ram­lo­gan need­ed to an­swer the fol­low­ing ques­tions: Did he (AG) not know the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry Act was not armed with the nec­es­sary pro­vi­sion to com­pel peo­ple to co-op­er­ate with the com­mis­sion and give ev­i­dence, and if he (AG) knew it was an im­po­tent ma­chin­ery, why did he spend mil­lions in tax­pay­ers monies to have this en­quiry?

Ram­lo­gan re­sponds to Ma­haraj

Told of the con­cerns ex­pressed by Ma­haraj and whether he knew the act was not strong enough, Ram­lo­gan said: "The first thing is the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry Act does con­tain penal­ties to se­cure at­ten­dance and co-op­er­a­tion."Ram­lo­gan said while Ma­haraj was AG, he (Ma­haraj) did not re­view the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry Act. Ram­lo­gan said if Ma­haraj felt the act was de­fi­cient then "he would have tak­en steps to rem­e­dy the de­fi­cien­cy at the ma­te­r­i­al time."

Point­ing out that no steps were tak­en to amend the act be­fore the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor, Ram­lo­gan said he didn't think the par­tic­u­lar leg­is­la­tion was lack­ing, but the penal­ty should be re­viewed up­wards.On the is­sue of the Lindquist re­port and his ea­ger­ness to have the re­port made pub­lic through the en­quiry, Ram­lo­gan said "rel­e­vant parts were dis­closed to the en­quiry and there­fore in­formed find­ings can be made."

He ex­plained: "The Lindquist re­port was some­what dat­ed by the time we went in­to of­fice and there was fresh or fur­ther ev­i­dence that jus­ti­fied a full-scale com­mis­sion of en­quiry.""The AG fur­ther added that the en­quiry served its pur­pose "in more ways than one and it (en­quiry) will lead to a tight­en­ing up of our reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work iden­ti­fied in the vul­ner­a­ble ar­eas and ad­dress the im­por­tant ques­tions of who is re­spon­si­ble and what might have been re­spon­si­ble for crit­i­cal de­ci­sions which led to the un­rav­el­ling of this fi­nan­cial gi­ant."

De­fend­ing his Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to not in­struct Col­man to amend the terms of ref­er­ence of the en­quiry, fol­low­ing con­cerns raised by Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard, SC, Ram­lo­gan said had the Gov­ern­ment heed­ed this ad­vice when the en­quiry was al­most 80 per cent com­plete and amend­ed the terms to ex­empt Lawrence Duprey and An­dre Mon­teil from tes­ti­fy­ing, then the cry would have been "the Gov­ern­ment was try­ing to help two big fish­es."

Duprey 'a want­ed man'–Ram­lo­gan

Ram­lo­gan dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann's on Thurs­day said that Duprey was now con­sid­ered "a want­ed man" and Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard had as­sem­bled a spe­cial­ist team of crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tors, in­clud­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al au­dit­ing firm and ex­pe­ri­enced lawyers, to start a probe.

The AG al­so said the po­lice ser­vice had ques­tions to an­swer about its fail­ure to serve a sum­mons on Duprey from the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the col­lapse of CL Fi­nan­cial and the Hin­du Cred­it Union (HCU).The AG had said ac­cord­ing to his in­for­ma­tion, Duprey man­aged to en­ter T&T and leave with­out be­ing served.

He was re­fer­ring to Duprey's fail­ure to ap­pear be­fore the com­mis­sion on Wednes­day. Both Duprey and for­mer fi­nan­cial di­rec­tor Mon­teil were key wit­ness­es to the en­quiry.The men failed to ap­pear, prompt­ing Col­man to sug­gest that the Gov­ern­ment should con­sid­er giv­ing com­mis­sions more pow­er so as to be able to com­pel wit­ness­es to ap­pear.Asked specif­i­cal­ly what this meant, Ram­lo­gan said Duprey's fail­ure to ap­pear in a mat­ter where he was the "cen­tral pro­tag­o­nist" ef­fec­tive­ly "makes him a want­ed man."

Dana See­ta­hal, SC, com­ments

Asked to com­ment on the AG's state­ments that the po­lice ser­vice failed to flag im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials on Duprey's ar­rival and de­par­ture in T&T, See­ta­hal said from her un­der­stand­ing, for a per­son to be flagged "the per­son is want­ed for an of­fence, is a sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ist or has pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions in an­oth­er coun­try."

The se­nior coun­sel ex­plained that the pro­vi­sions un­der the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry Act are sim­i­lar to the crim­i­nal law.Ex­plain­ing that if some­one is charged, lo­cal law en­force­ment can­not just en­ter an­oth­er coun­try and bring the in­di­vid­ual to T&T, See­ta­hal added, "You can­not force them to come back, there are pro­ce­dures which need to be fol­lowed, un­less the per­son agrees to re­turn."

No com­ment–DCP Mervyn Richard­son

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment on the state­ments made by Ram­lo­gan, DCP Mervyn Richard­son said, "When the AG talk, I have noth­ing to say."I'm not say­ing any­thing. I don't get in­volved in the po­lit­i­cal talk."Told the "po­lit­i­cal talk" was cast­ing as­per­sions on his of­fi­cers, Richard­son said, "I have no com­ment."

Vice pres­i­dent of the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion-Michael Seales

Seales said his as­so­ci­a­tion heard Ram­lo­gan's com­ments and ex­plained that hav­ing worked at the air­port just over three years, two units were re­spon­si­ble for the "red flag­ging" of in­di­vid­u­als, name­ly Spe­cial Branch (SB) and the Or­gan­ised Crime Nar­cotics and Firearms Bu­reau (OC­NFB)."If there is any­one want­ed un­der the pre­tence of breach­ing the law, or want­ed in terms of a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the unit con­duct­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion would con­tact SB or the OC­NFB.

"If SB gets the in­for­ma­tion, it will be passed to the OC­NFB (of­ten when it is for an ar­rest)," Seales said.Seales said as a re­spon­si­ble as­so­ci­a­tion, he would not al­low "the wrong in­for­ma­tion to be cir­cu­lat­ed in pub­lic."He ex­plained when a sum­mons was is­sued, there was no ju­ris­dic­tion to ar­rest the in­di­vid­ual."It is an un­fair state­ment, giv­en the cir­cum­stances the po­lice ser­vice is be­ing made out to be.

The as­so­ci­a­tion will jeal­ous­ly guard the lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism in this ser­vice and will re­ject any­thing which will do dam­age to the ser­vice," Seales said.An­oth­er se­nior of­fi­cer who wished not to be iden­ti­fied said ba­sic po­lice pro­ce­dures demon­strate "there isn't any mer­it in the po­lice ar­rest­ing Mr Duprey at this junc­ture.""In any event, com­mon sense as any ju­nior of­fi­cer will know, that mat­ter is sub­ject to an en­quiry, and as such the po­lice ser­vice will be guid­ed by the out­come of that en­quiry.

To do any­thing pre­ma­ture­ly can on­ly reek of un­pro­fes­sion­al­ism and bring ir­repara­ble dam­age."A sub­poe­na is not some­thing un­der which some­one is "red flagged," it is dif­fer­ent to a war­rant of ar­rest and there is no sub­stance in the com­ments of the AG with re­gards to the po­lice in­volve­ment."