Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour in­tends to present Par­lia­ment with a list of fees paid to at­tor­neys who worked for the state and will be paid a to­tal of $120 mil­lion ahead—but he’ll con­sult with them to as­cer­tain if they wish to have their names made pub­lic.

Ar­mour in­di­cat­ed this dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing in Par­lia­ment, where Gov­ern­ment pre­sent­ed a list of 12 di­vi­sions which will re­ceive sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing for op­er­a­tions for the rest of the fis­cal year.

The Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs was al­lo­cat­ed $124,300,000 for op­er­a­tional costs, le­gal fees, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty and oth­er ar­eas.

UNC MP Sad­dam Ho­sein not­ed the min­istry’s use of its sup­ple­men­tary funds would in­clude pay­ing $30 mil­lion to lo­cal at­tor­neys and $90 mil­lion to for­eign at­tor­neys. He sought a list of the at­tor­neys and their fees.

Ar­mour said it had been the min­istry’s prac­tice to pro­vide de­tails to Par­lia­ment in large terms, while re­spect­ing the pri­va­cy of peo­ple who of­fered their ser­vices.

He said, “I’m pre­pared to of­fer in writ­ing a break­down of fees, but not to name the at­tor­neys to whom they’re be­ing paid.”

Ho­sein asked if no names at all of those col­lect­ing pub­lic monies would pro­vid­ed. Ar­mour said he was pre­pared to give a break­down of fees but wasn’t pre­pared to give the names of in­di­vid­ual at­tor­neys.

Ho­sein, claim­ing the “goal­posts were be­ing shift­ed”, said ini­tial­ly, for the al­lo­ca­tion of $45 mil­lion in the orig­i­nal al­lo­ca­tion that’s now be­ing sup­ple­ment­ed, the AG would have pro­vid­ed a list­ing of le­gal fees for those at­tor­neys who agreed to have their fees be­ing re­vealed.

“Now we’re hear­ing a dif­fer­ent sto­ry where he’s not pro­vid­ing a sin­gle name...we don’t know who the at­tor­neys are, what they’re be­ing paid for—this is ab­solute­ly lu­di­crous! ... the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has a du­ty to ac­count!”

The sit­u­a­tion was al­so crit­i­cised by UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal.

But Ar­mour said, “When I say I’ll give a break­down, I’ll do it in writ­ing but I won’t dis­close at­tor­neys’ name ... I said I wish to re­spect their pri­va­cy. In the break­down which I’ll give, I’ll take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­sult with those at­tor­neys who wish to waive their right to pri­va­cy and if they wish me to give their names, I will.

“But I’m not mak­ing an un­equiv­o­cal com­mit­ment at this stage to give a break­down of every at­tor­ney. I’ll give the gross sum and those at­tor­neys who wish to have their names pil­lo­ried in this au­gust cham­ber by the Op­po­si­tion can do so,” Ar­mour added.

When Ar­mour be­gan re­ply­ing (to Mooni­lal’s query) that the break­down would in­clude—as an ex­am­ple—the pe­ri­od from 2010 to 2011, UNC MPs protest­ed.

Ar­mour said his ex­pla­na­tion will give con­text with ref­er­ence to the 2015-24 pe­ri­od, which will con­tex­tu­alise the 2010-2015 pe­ri­od un­der the UNC gov­ern­ment and in­for­ma­tion would show that $164 mil­lion was paid from 2015-2022 as monies the PNM Gov­ern­ment in­her­it­ed and owed.

Ar­mour added he’d give the in­for­ma­tion MPs were re­quest­ing no lat­er than Thurs­day. He said it will in­clude a bill for $6 mil­lion which the state had to pay for the Ravi Bal­go­b­in lit­i­ga­tion, “... and earned by well-known prac­ti­tion­ers that rep­re­sent that gen­tle­man and it will al­so in­clude $14.6 mil­lion paid for COVID lit­i­ga­tion against the state.”

UNC MP Dave Tan­coo protest­ed Ar­mour’s ref­er­ence to the “prac­ti­tion­ers”. That caused loud shout­ing be­tween Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion, to which SFC chair­man Bridgid An­nisette-George had to re­peat­ed­ly call for or­der for every­one to bring their “tem­pers down”.

On Tan­coo’s fur­ther query about the list which will be giv­en, Ar­mour said his an­swer in­tends to pro­vide de­tails re­spect­ing the pub­lic in­ter­est of dis­clo­sure, “but equal­ly re­spect­ing the rights of in­di­vid­u­als to pri­va­cy”.

“There­fore, those at­tor­neys who con­sent to their names be­ing giv­en will be giv­en. Those at­tor­neys who don’t wish their names to be giv­en, the gross sums paid to them mi­nus names will al­so be giv­en,” he said.

UNC MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly asked why Gov­ern­ment was con­tin­u­ing to en­gage ser­vices of those who don’t wish their names to be pub­lished if they’re be­ing paid by tax­pay­ers. He said it should be a con­di­tion that they be pre­pared to have their fees pub­lished in Par­lia­ment.

Ar­mour said, “My pol­i­cy is to re­tain the best at­tor­neys at hand from case to case.”

On an­oth­er SFC is­sue, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Allyson West said sup­ple­men­tal funds for the ser­vice com­mis­sions in­clude monies to han­dle five on­go­ing le­gal mat­ters be­ing han­dled by at­tor­neys Rus­sel Mar­tineau, Dou­glas Mendes, Deb­o­rah Peake and Ian Ben­jamin.