Gail Alexan­der

No con­flict of in­ter­est ex­ists.That's the view of Law As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Regi­nald Ar­mour to whom At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi passed the Petrotrin re­port on the Mal­colm Jones mat­ter.

This fol­lowed rev­e­la­tions yes­ter­day in Com­pa­nies' Reg­is­trar records show­ing that three di­rec­tors of a com­pa­ny, known as Abox In­vest­ments Ltd, in 2004 were at­tor­ney Ar­mour (list­ed at 90 Mar­aval Road), at­tor­ney Vanes­sa Gopaul (same ad­dress) and at­tor­ney Al-Rawi (at 45a St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain).The record was stamped No­vem­ber 9, 2004.

Al-Rawi re­cent­ly said he had passed the Jones' re­port to the as­so­ci­a­tion. That body wrote him re­cent­ly seek­ing a copy since mem­bers want­ed to ex­am­ine it, the T&T Guardian learned.On the Abox com­pa­ny where he and Al-Rawi once served, Ar­mour said he and Gopaul sold their shares in the com­pa­ny years ago and have no fi­nan­cial in­ter­est in it. "There's no con­flict of in­ter­est," he added.

Al-Rawi con­firmed Ar­mour was a par­tic­i­pant in the 2004 ven­ture but lat­er sold his in­ter­est. Not­ing that con­flict of in­ter­est could on­ly arise if there was in­for­ma­tion one had that caused one to be in con­flict with the is­sue at hand, he added.

"As a pro­fes­sion­al lawyer, I have worked with Mr Ar­mour on the same le­gal team in loads of mat­ters. I have al­so worked against him on dif­fer­ent le­gal teams op­posed to his point of view," he said.

Say­ing the Abox mat­ter was ir­rel­e­vant, he said there could be no con­flict of in­ter­est in the cur­rent Jones' re­port mat­ter since it was a pure in­de­pen­dent le­gal per­spec­tive of­fered by the Law As­so­ci­a­tion in re­la­tion to the Petrotrin dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the mat­ter against Jones.He main­tained he as­sist­ed trans­paren­cy with the Petrotrin is­sue by putting the file out for view­ing by the Law As­so­ci­a­tion.

Al-Rawi said the Abox com­pa­ny was not in­volved in the is­sue at hand."If there was to be a part­ing of the ways on the ba­sis of this kind of sit­u­a­tion, then no­body in T&T would be able to speak to me on any mat­ters since my years of prac­tice I have in­ter­act­ed with al­most every­one in the le­gal pro­fes­sion in some form or fash­ion."

The as­so­ci­a­tion con­clud­ed its dis­cus­sions on the Jones' re­port on Tues­day. The file con­cerned Petrotrin's dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the le­gal mat­ter against Jones start­ed in the past PP ad­min­is­tra­tion's tenure in­volv­ing the con­tro­ver­sial Gas to Liq­uids (GTL) plan.