Former attorney generals (AG) John Jeremie and Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj yesterday joined voices in a call on the Police Service to investigate the legal fees incurred by the Office of the Attorney General during the four-year tenure of attorney Anand Ramlogan.
The two former AGs, with two different political backgrounds, also called on the police to ensure there was a forensic audit into the financial documents of the Office of the Attorney General.
They made the call during a press conference yesterday at the Radisson Hotel, Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain.
It was called to explain the role of the Attorney General in T&T.
They said investigations also needed to be conducted regarding what could potentially be "close to a billion dollars" in legal fees incurred by state boards and state agencies as Ramlogan had given a directive that he would handpick lawyers to represent state boards in legal matters.
Maharaj, who was AG between 1995 to 2001, said the financial statements at the Office of the Attorney General between 2010 and 2015 when Ramlogan was AG, showed a prima facie case for financial impropriety.
He said the information provided in the financial statements laid in Parliament last Friday was an indication of "scandal in the court" where junior lawyers were being paid exorbitant fees and the idea of reasonable cost was being flouted.
He said the Office of the Attorney General had been brought into disrepute.
He described the expenditure for legal fees under Ramlogan as wrong and reckless and asked "why the Prime Minister aided and abetted these wrongs."
"In some cases, lawyers who had little or no experience after law school were paid the fees of senior lawyers," he added.
He said while he had retained lawyers as a former AG, he had difficulty believing the sums spent between 2010 and 2015, noting that he had handled several high profile cases.
"As far as I can recall my allocation for legal fees was about $25 million."
He said the fees needed to be looked at as the Legal Profession Act required lawyers to use reasonable costs.
Maharaj said a schedule of reasonable costs was published by the Law Association and could be used for a comparison.
Jeremie said the Attorney General was the only official allowed by the constitution to spend money without oversight and added that the trust given to the AG by legislative arrangements should not be abused.
"Over the past few weeks, I have been horrified to see details of the spending patterns of the Attorney General," Jeremie said.
He described the spending under Ramlogan as voluminous and confusing.
He said details of expenditure suggested that taxpayers were not getting value for money.
Jeremie said when he was Attorney General, the legal fees of the office of the AG allocated for 2010 was $36 million, a figure which jumped by more than 100 per cent during Ramlogan's first year in office.
"I take no pleasure pointing fingers at a past student of mine," Jeremie said, referring to Ramlogan.
He said it was his duty to raise those issues in the public interest.
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Former Attorney General Anand Ramlogan said yesterday he welcomed a police probe into the financial statements.
He added: "Unlike when the PNM was in the power when they refused to disclose in the Parliament on money spent on legal fees, I was happy to disclose all legal fees spent during my tenure and not rely on backward precedent.
"I have no doubt that the expenditure would withstand scrutiny. I will not pay attention to what is clearly a politically motivated call by people who share positions that are in opposition."
Asked whether the budget for legal fees had indeed skyrocketed under his tenure, Ramlogan said it was a matter of public record that Cabinet authorised several probes into UTT, Petrotrin, Eteck and Udecott and that was an unbudgeted expenditure in the ministry.
"It has resulted in the unprecedented filing of four civil cases which could recover close to $2 billion for the country."
He said the State had won over 95 per cent of the matters in which the lawyers were retained.
He criticised both Jeremie and Maharaj, saying Jeremie should tell the country the cost of legal fees spent when former chief justice Sat Sharma was being hounded out of office.
"I am rather surprised he would emerge from political hibernation," he added.
He said similar allegations had been made by John Jeremie against Maharaj when he was in office regarding hiring foreign lawyers.
"I am not concerned about any investigation into anything. I, as always, welcomes an investigation. The allegations of financial impropriety is baseless and ridiculous and patently false."
Ramlogan also denied paying $408,000 for a pre-action protocol letter or response to one.
"I have never received such an invoice from an attorney or authorised payment for any such invoice. It is a malicious falsehood. It is totally false.
"The way payments are made in the ministry is that the file comes from the solicitor general. It simply did not happen. It is a fabrication and I challenge anyone to produce such an invoice," he added.