JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter-In­ves­tiga­tive

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion Roger Gas­pard said yes­ter­day that while for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj SC has come out to de­fend his (Gas­pard’s) de­ci­sion not to re­lo­cate to a $55 mil­lion leased build­ing in Port-of-Spain, he (Gas­pard) did not hire Ma­haraj to give an in­de­pen­dent view in the mat­ter.

In Oc­to­ber, Gas­pard said he was seek­ing le­gal ad­vice af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ex­pressed his dis­plea­sure at the State spend­ing over $50 mil­lion to retro­fit, up­grade and lease the build­ing for state at­tor­neys, on­ly for the DPP’s staff to refuse to move in­to it.

The is­sue was raised again dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment meet­ing af­ter the 2024 Bud­get by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, who said that $55 mil­lion had beens paid in rental fees for the build­ing since 2019 but the DPP and his staff nev­er moved in.

Fol­low­ing the rev­e­la­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley again crit­i­cised the DPP for not oc­cu­py­ing the build­ing.

“We had to out­fit it to suit the de­part­ment that was go­ing to go in there. We did all that. Then we heard that there were se­cu­ri­ty is­sues, we spent mon­ey strength­en­ing the fa­cil­i­ty, bul­let­proof here, this that there. We did all of that. At the end of the day, af­ter we spent 55 mil­lion dol­lars, a pub­lic ser­vant could de­cide ‘ah not go­ing in there’. Some­thing has to be wrong with that! And as a tax­pay­er, I am in­censed that that could hap­pen in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

On Thurs­day, Ma­haraj is­sued a state­ment de­fend­ing Gas­pard’s de­ci­sion not to move to the new lo­ca­tion, point­ing out that the state ef­fec­tive­ly did not ad­dress the safe­ty is­sues raised about the site in a T&T Po­lice Ser­vice Spe­cial Branch re­port on the mat­ter.

Asked specif­i­cal­ly if he had hired Ma­haraj yes­ter­day, Gas­pard told Guardian Me­dia that he did not seek Ma­haraj’s ad­vice and did not con­sid­er the po­si­tion Ma­haraj took as a de­fence for his (Gas­pard’s) de­ci­sion not to oc­cu­py the new build­ing.

Asked to com­ment on the con­tin­u­ing de­bate in­to the mat­ter, Gas­pard said, “These are mat­ters that re­quire con­sul­ta­tion and the tak­ing of ad­vice, in some cas­es, le­gal ad­vice, so I can­not at this stage tell you that I will or will not be com­ment­ing. I’m tak­ing ad­vice on the mat­ter.”

On Thurs­day, Ma­haraj, in de­fend­ing Gas­pard’s de­ci­sion, Ma­haraj said, “The DPP did not have any in­put in the de­ci­sion made by the Gov­ern­ment to en­ter in­to the rental agree­ment of the build­ing which the Gov­ern­ment en­tered in­to in 2019. The DPP al­so did not have any in­put in the de­ci­sion of the Gov­ern­ment to pay any rentals for that build­ing af­ter the ten­an­cy ex­pired. The DPP al­so did not have any in­put in the de­ci­sion made af­ter the lease rental had ex­pired to con­sid­er re­new­ing the lease rental.”

He added, “The rea­son the DPP did not oc­cu­py the build­ing was be­cause of the con­tents of the sev­er­al Spe­cial Branch Re­ports and the non-im­ple­men­ta­tion ful­ly of the rec­om­men­da­tions con­tained in those re­ports be­cause if the DPP and his staff oc­cu­pied the build­ing in those cir­cum­stances, it would have put their lives at huge risk.”