Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

More than a month af­ter the post be­came va­cant, Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona has ap­point­ed cer­ti­fied an­ti-mon­ey-laun­der­ing spe­cial­ist at­tor­ney David West as di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA).In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the Pres­i­dent's in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer Theron Boodan said West would be sworn in at the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, Cir­cu­lar Road, St Ann's, at 11 am to­day.

West has pre­vi­ous­ly been a state pros­e­cu­tor in the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion, di­rec­tor des­ig­nate of the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) at the Fi­nance Min­istry and head of the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty Unit (CAU) at the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

He has been at log­ger­heads with the Gov­ern­ment on sev­er­al is­sues, in­clud­ing the Sec­tion 34 is­sue, and has pub­licly crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment's de­lays in com­ply­ing with rec­om­men­da­tions made by the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF) in 2013.At the time West said if T&T did not pros­e­cute any­one in­volved in white-col­lar crimes the coun­try could be black­list­ed and placed on the list of non co-op­er­a­tive ter­ri­to­ries.West served as a mem­ber of the Cab­i­net ap­point­ed-com­mit­tee on AML in 2010.In an in­ter­view be­fore the an­nounce­ment, Boodan said the name of the new chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion would be di­vulged soon.He said in­ter­views had tak­en place over the past few weeks to find suit­able can­di­dates for va­cant posts.

Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair­man Prof Ramesh De­osaran re­signed on Sep­tem­ber 1 af­ter serv­ing for three years and four months. A day lat­er, Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty head Gillian Lucky al­so re­signed to serve as a High Court judge.For­mer In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion chair­man Ken­neth Gor­don left of­fice on Oc­to­ber 31 af­ter serv­ing his three-year term.

Say­ing there was no need to hire a re­cruit­ment agency or ad­ver­tise, Boodan said: "We have a po­ten­tial chair­man for the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. Some­one has al­ready been in­ter­viewed."

He agreed there were dif­fi­cul­ties in get­ting can­di­dates as con­cerns were raised about the per­son­al at­tacks of­ten made on those ap­point­ed to serve on state com­mis­sions.

Boodan said back­ground checks must be done on can­di­dates to de­ter­mine their lev­el of qual­i­fi­ca­tion, po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion and po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions, as well as their field of ex­per­tise.

In the case of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, Boodan said the chair­man by law must have a cer­ti­fied back­ground in so­ci­ol­o­gy.

"It takes time to find a suit­able can­di­date. Some­times you find some­body and you have to check out the per­son to see whether they are suit­ed for the po­si­tion.

"Each po­si­tion re­quires cer­tain qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­per­tise. When you find some­one you have to write the Prime Min­is­ter and the Op­po­si­tion Leader and then wait for their re­sponse," he ex­plained.

Asked whether hav­ing to de­clare their as­sets un­der the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act de­terred po­ten­tial can­di­dates, Boodan said in some cas­es can­di­dates might be re­luc­tant to de­clare their as­sets.

He added: "The ma­jor­i­ty of them, how­ev­er, were talk­ing about be­ing em­bar­rassed in pub­lic with­out re­dress. They are hu­mil­i­at­ed for serv­ing their coun­try."

He said the de­c­la­ra­tion of as­sets was an is­sue that should be tak­en up by the ex­ec­u­tive arm of gov­ern­ment.

Boodan al­so said he did not see how de­lays in mak­ing pres­i­den­tial ap­point­ments were af­fect­ing is­sues of crime and cor­rup­tion.

"Op­er­a­tions are go­ing on and is­sues are be­ing dealt with. There are va­can­cies and we are work­ing to fill those but we just can­not pull some names out of a hat and make ap­point­ments be­cause if the can­di­dates fail, the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent will be held re­spon­si­ble," Boodan said.

Sec­re­tary of the Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Sgt Michael Seales was in a meet­ing yes­ter­day and was not avail­able for com­ment.

On Tues­day he said the op­er­a­tional ac­count­abil­i­ty of the po­lice was hin­dered by the ab­sence of heads of the PCA and the PSC.

New PCA head's CV

West has over ten years' ex­pe­ri­ence in deal­ing with ex­tra­di­tion and mu­tu­al le­gal as­sis­tance and as­sist­ed in draft­ing sev­er­al laws, in­clud­ing the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit Act 2009, Pro­ceeds of Crime (Amend­ment) Act 2009, the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act 2010 and the Fi­nan­cial Oblig­a­tions Reg­u­la­tions 2009.

He was ju­nior coun­sel to An­drew Mitchell, QC, who pros­e­cut­ed the first mon­ey laun­der­ing case in T&T.

West was re­spon­si­ble for draft­ing the amend­ment to the Ex­tra­di­tion Act 1985 and is recog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al­ly for his suc­cess in ex­tra­dit­ing a num­ber of sus­pects, the most no­table be­ing the "JFK ter­ror­ist bombers" and sev­en peo­ple in­volved in the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of US cit­i­zen "Ba­lo" Ma­haraj.

West was al­so in­volved in the ex­tra­di­tion of Steve Fer­gu­son and Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh up un­til Au­gust 2010.

He has a BSc in eco­nom­ics and law, an LLB (Hons) and is a cer­ti­fied an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing spe­cial­ist (CAMS) at El Do­ra­do Cham­bers.

CAMS cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is recog­nised world­wide by fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and gov­ern­ment agen­cies as an in­di­ca­tion of an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing (AML) ex­per­tise.

West stud­ied at Brunel Uni­ver­si­ty and is a past stu­dent of Na­pari­ma Col­lege.

How the PCA head is cho­sen

Un­der the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty Act, the di­rec­tor and deputy di­rec­tor are ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent on the joint ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter and the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion.

If they can­not agree on the joint ad­vice, the Pres­i­dent ap­points the di­rec­tor and the deputy di­rec­tor af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the Prime Min­is­ter and the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion.