Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi, SC, is call­ing on At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, SC, to con­tin­ue ef­forts to en­force a US$150 mil­lion-plus judg­ment against busi­ness­man Steve Fer­gu­son, for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung, and a US busi­ness­man, fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion linked to the con­struc­tion of Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Al-Rawi made the call yes­ter­day af­ter a three-judge pan­el of the Third Dis­trict Court of Ap­peal in Flori­da up­held the land­mark civ­il as­set re­cov­ery case on Wednes­day.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Al-Rawi not­ed that the case was first ini­ti­at­ed in 2004 dur­ing Je­re­mie’s ini­tial term as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al un­der a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment.

“I would re­mind you that Mr Je­re­mie was the vic­tim of a lot of per­se­cu­tion by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) for this case when he was in the PNM,” Al-Rawi said. “Mr Je­re­mie is for­tu­nate to see the fruit of his ini­tial en­deav­ours come to fruition.”

Al-Rawi said the case had been left in abeyance dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment (2010–2015) and was lat­er re­vived when he be­came AG. He con­tin­ued to play a piv­otal role even af­ter for­mer AG Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, re­placed him, not­ing Ar­mour was dis­qual­i­fied for down­play­ing his role in rep­re­sent­ing Kuei Tung in lo­cal crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.

“This judg­ment demon­strates that any al­le­ga­tions of po­lit­i­cal im­pro­pri­ety are re­al­ly un­found­ed,” Al-Rawi said.

“For my part, I did the heavy lift­ing for ten years straight, man­aged the lit­i­ga­tion the en­tire time, ap­peared in the tri­al, and was step by step in­volved in the process. I am very pleased to see the fruit of the vine has come in­to re­al­i­ty.”

Al-Rawi not­ed that while Fer­gu­son pur­sued the ap­peal, the State had al­ready sought to en­force the judg­ment by iden­ti­fy­ing de­fen­dants’ US as­sets that could be seized. He added that sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­est con­tin­ues to ac­crue while the judg­ment re­mains un­paid.

At­tempts to con­tact Je­re­mie for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful. He re­quest­ed writ­ten ques­tions, which Guardian Me­dia sub­mit­ted, but no re­sponse was re­ceived by late yes­ter­day.

The US law­suit stems from al­leged fraud and in­fla­tion of two con­struc­tion con­tracts and a main­te­nance con­tract for the air­port. In May 2023, Mi­a­mi-Dade Cir­cuit Court Judge Reem­ber­to Di­az en­tered fi­nal judg­ment against Fer­gu­son, Kuei Tung, and Raul Gutier­rez Jr for US$131,318,840.47, based on a US$32,385,988 ju­ry award tripled un­der the US Rack­e­teer In­flu­enced and Cor­rupt Or­ga­ni­za­tions Act (RI­CO). The de­fen­dants were al­so or­dered to pay US$17 mil­lion in le­gal costs and US$38,876,972.89 in pre-judg­ment in­ter­est, mi­nus US$4,631,691 pre­vi­ous­ly paid.

The US case is sep­a­rate from three pend­ing lo­cal crim­i­nal cas­es con­nect­ed to the air­port project. A fourth case against for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, his wife, and for­mer min­is­ter Car­los John was dis­con­tin­ued in 2023 due to a low like­li­hood of con­vic­tion.

While the State pre­pared to en­force the US judg­ment, Fer­gu­son filed ap­peals and chal­lenged the lit­i­ga­tion’s con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty in lo­cal courts. Two judges de­nied in­junc­tions to halt the process. The con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge is set for tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams in Jan­u­ary.

In their Flori­da rul­ing, the ap­pel­late court re­ject­ed Fer­gu­son’s claim that T&T lacked ju­ris­dic­tion.

Jus­tice Gor­do not­ed: “A do­mes­tic in­jury oc­curred in Flori­da where, over mul­ti­ple years, wrong­ful acts and plans were de­vised, ini­ti­at­ed, and car­ried out through acts and com­mu­ni­ca­tions di­rect­ed to­wards Flori­da.”

The court cit­ed ev­i­dence that Fer­gu­son or­ches­trat­ed parts of the con­spir­a­cy in Mi­a­mi, in­clud­ing meet­ings to se­lect project con­sul­tants, con­ceal­ing trans­fers through fab­ri­cat­ed agree­ments, re­view­ing doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to il­lic­it pay­ments, and trans­fer­ring over US$1 mil­lion to Mi­a­mi ac­counts held by Gutier­rez. Ev­i­dence al­so showed co-con­spir­a­tors in Flori­da cre­at­ing fake in­voic­es, back­dat­ed con­tracts, and de­stroy­ing a hard dri­ve con­tain­ing in­crim­i­nat­ing in­for­ma­tion.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands Fer­gu­son may seek a fi­nal ap­peal to the US Supreme Court.