Gail Alexan­der ??

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan yes­ter­day told the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) to file a court ac­tion, as he used to do while in pri­vate prac­tice, if they had grous­es about any­thing and had ev­i­dence.Ram­lo­gan made the point in the Sen­ate, where he got in­to a spar­ring match with PNM sen­a­tors.

The is­sue arose when Ram­lo­gan an­swered a query on the so called "A-Team" of lawyers hired to in­ves­ti­gate cor­rup­tion in the state sec­tor that al­leged­ly took place un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. He gave the sta­tus of some of the cas­es. Civ­il probes by the A team in the High Court were for mis­con­duct, neg­li­gence, fraud, mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion and breach of fidu­cia­ry du­ties.Ram­lo­gan said the sta­tus of the claim by E-Teck against Ken Julien–where E-Teck was suc­cess­ful–is un­der ap­peal and judg­ment is due on Ju­ly 18.

In the $12 mil­lion claim of UTT vs Julien and oth­ers, the Ap­peal Court on Mon­day dis­missed an ap­peal by the for­mer UTT board mem­bers, and Ram­lo­gan said the way is now clear to pur­sue the ac­tion against the de­fen­dants. Tri­al has been fixed for De­cem­ber.

In the $600 mil­lion claim against for­mer Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) head Calder Hart, Kr­ish­na Ba­hadoors­ingh and Le­an­dra Ram­paul over al­leged mis­man­age­ment of the con­struc­tion of the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, in Tarou­ba, and the award of con­tracts to a favoured con­trac­tor, Ram­lo­gan said this was at the dis­clo­sure stage. A case man­age­ment hear­ing is sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber.

Al­so, a case man­age­ment con­fer­ence is sched­uled to be held to­mor­row on the $1.2 bil­lion claim by Petrotrin against for­mer CEO Mal­colm Jones on the Gas to Liq­uids Plant is­sue.

Ram­lo­gan gave the gen­e­sis of some of the cas­es and PNM sen­a­tor Camille Robin­son-Reg­is ex­pressed con­cern that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al would be get­ting in­to sub-ju­dice ter­ri­to­ry in his dis­course. Ram­lo­gan replied that he was giv­ing a sta­tus re­port on the mat­ters be­fore the court and was not say­ing any­thing that would have an im­pact on the cas­es.Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Stu­art Young al­so ex­pressed con­cern on the sub-ju­dice as­pect, say­ing he rep­re­sent­ed a client against whom one of the State's cas­es has been brought.

Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith said the AG was giv­ing a sta­tus re­port and wouldn't em­bark on is­sues re­lat­ed to the facts of the mat­ter.Ram­lo­gan lat­er had to with­draw a re­mark that Young was in a con­flict of in­ter­est con­cern­ing his client in the case.The PNM's Faris Al-Rawi al­so claimed the AG was dis­cussing as­pects of the cas­es. But Ram­lo­gan said he had no in­ten­tion of falling in­to a trap by mak­ing state­ments in Par­lia­ment on the cas­es which might lat­er be used against the state in the court pro­ceed­ings.

Al-Rawi asked if the AG would al­so re­cruit the A-Team to probe is­sues in gov­ern­ment like the Na­tion­al Quar­ries, con­tracts award­ed to Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices (SIS), Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and oth­ers the PNM has raised.Ram­lo­gan said when he was in pri­vate prac­tice he filed a court ac­tion against the PNM Gov­ern­ment for peo­ple in­clud­ing Mar­lene Coudray and De­vant Ma­haraj, which he had won.

He said is­sues could al­so be tak­en to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, the po­lice or the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP).He said the A-Team's work would lead to the re­cov­ery of mil­lions of dol­lars for T&T since le­gal claims be­ing sought by the State to­talled over $2 bil­lion.Al-Rawi asked if the A-team's man­date in­clud­ed the "fail­ure of state en­ter­pris­es to deal with a ter­ri­ble, sick­en­ing prob­lem of rat in­fes­ta­tion."

Ram­lo­gan replied, "I want to ad­vise him I have the ad­dress and num­ber of Ren­tok­il, if he's so in­ter­est­ed."