Derek Achong

Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T mem­bers will meet Fri­day af­ter­noon to de­bate and vote on a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that a lit­tle over 300 of the as­so­ci­a­tion’s ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,000 vot­ing mem­bers have sig­nalled their in­ten­tion to par­tic­i­pate ei­ther in-per­son or vir­tu­al­ly at the spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing, which will be held at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain from 2 pm.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands AG Ar­mour has agreed to de­fend him­self be­fore his peers vir­tu­al­ly.

Ac­cord­ing to the no­tice for the meet­ing is­sued to the mem­ber­ship, two res­o­lu­tions are to be con­sid­ered at the meet­ing.

One seeks to have the as­so­ci­a­tion of­fi­cial­ly ex­press no-con­fi­dence in Ar­mour, who served as its pres­i­dent be­tween 2015 and 2017. The oth­er seeks to call on Ar­mour to im­me­di­ate­ly re­sign.

How­ev­er, if the res­o­lu­tions are passed, they are like­ly to have no re­al tan­gi­ble ef­fect, as the as­so­ci­a­tion has no pow­er to com­pel Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to re­voke Ar­mour’s ap­point­ment or force his res­ig­na­tion.

The mo­tion of no-con­fi­dence re­lates to Ar­mour’s role in the State’s pro­tract­ed civ­il as­set re­cov­ery case against some for­mer gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and com­pa­nies ac­cused of fraud and cor­rup­tion in the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

In late April, Mi­a­mi-Dade Cir­cuit Court Judge Reem­ber­to Di­az dis­qual­i­fied Ar­mour and Se­quor Law, the US law firm which was rep­re­sent­ing T&T’s in­ter­est, from con­tin­ued par­tic­i­pa­tion in the case.

The judge’s de­ci­sion was re­port­ed­ly based on Ar­mour al­leged­ly down­play­ing his role in pre­vi­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ing for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung in sep­a­rate lo­cal crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings over the project. 
How­ev­er, the judge re­fused Kuei Tung’s oth­er ap­pli­ca­tion to strike out the en­tire law­suit.

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al and cur­rent Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi was ap­point­ed as the sub­sti­tute client rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the case, which is sched­uled for hear­ing in Sep­tem­ber. 
The State, through its new le­gal team, has chal­lenged the de­ci­sion but has been re­fused an ex­pe­dit­ed ap­peal hear­ing.

In a full-page news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment, pub­lished af­ter pub­lic com­men­tary over what tran­spired in the case, Ar­mour de­nied he mis­led the US Court when he ini­tial­ly claimed he on­ly played a mi­nor role in rep­re­sent­ing Kuei Tung, which was lim­it­ed to re­search and note-tak­ing.

Ar­mour claimed his ini­tial af­fi­davit to the court was pre­pared whilst he was in Eu­rope on va­ca­tion and he did not have ac­cess to his of­fice records to ful­ly re­call the ex­tent of his in­volve­ment in the case over 14 years ago. He al­so claimed he was not al­lowed to rec­ti­fy the er­ror when he had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ver­i­fy his records short­ly af­ter.

In the orig­i­nal req­ui­si­tion for the meet­ing, which was signed by over three dozen mem­bers, at­tor­ney Kiel Tak­lals­ingh said the group felt the is­sue should be dis­cussed by the mem­ber­ship as it con­cerns the in­tegri­ty of the le­gal pro­fes­sion.

Row­ley pub­licly dis­missed the move by the as­so­ci­a­tion to host the meet­ing at a press con­fer­ence be­fore he left to at­tend a re­cent Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing in Suri­name.

Row­ley said: “As for the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, the on­ly thing I am con­cerned about is who in this coun­try has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pass a vote of no-con­fi­dence against the Law As­so­ci­a­tion? Be­cause I want to vote.”

Row­ley al­so claimed the as­so­ci­a­tion had pre­vi­ous­ly at­tempt­ed to en­trap him to be a wit­ness in an­oth­er mat­ter in­volv­ing Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie.

“So, if you find me un­fazed by the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, I have good grounds be­cause they on­ly seem to be in­ter­est­ed when it is time to cre­ate pub­lic dis­cord. When it’s time to stand up for the pub­lic in­ter­est, they bury their heads in the sand like os­trich­es,” Row­ley said.

Re­spond­ing to Row­ley, LATT said it was ob­lig­at­ed to call the meet­ing once it re­ceived a valid req­ui­si­tion from its mem­bers.

It al­so called on Row­ley to with­draw his “mis­lead­ing” com­ments in re­la­tion to a pre­vi­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to CJ Archie.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said the mat­ter in­volv­ing CJ Archie was re­lat­ed to his al­leged im­prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Row­ley, who on­ly de­nied the com­mu­ni­ca­tion when he an­nounced that he would not im­peach him (Archie) in Ju­ly 2019. 


“The Law As­so­ci­a­tion’s en­quiry was nei­ther sur­rep­ti­tious nor an at­tempt to en­trap the Prime Min­is­ter as al­leged or at all,” it said, as claimed it had to ask Row­ley the ques­tions as part of its en­quiry.

“It is in­deed re­gret­table that com­ments on the mat­ter have been ex­pressed in a way which sug­gests the Law As­so­ci­a­tion act­ed im­prop­er­ly in dis­charg­ing its le­git­i­mate func­tions,” LATT said.

In a press re­lease is­sued on Thurs­day mean­while, out­spo­ken Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan called on his col­leagues to ei­ther with­draw the mo­tion or over­whelm­ing­ly vote against it.

Khan said on his analy­sis of the US case, he was of the opin­ion Ar­mour did not com­mit per­jury as sug­gest­ed.

“On scru­ti­n­is­ing and analysing the said af­fi­davit it is my con­sid­ered le­gal opin­ion that it is not bla­tant­ly and ob­vi­ous­ly false. It is open to in­ter­pre­ta­tion that when he said he was a ju­nior at­tor­ney he meant a ju­nior se­nior at­tor­ney. He left out ‘se­nior’,” Khan said. 


He sug­gest­ed that based on Ar­mour’s “im­pec­ca­ble in­tegri­ty” in his lengthy le­gal ca­reer, the er­ror would not have been in­ten­tion­al but due to in­ad­ver­tence.

How­ev­er, Khan en­cour­aged Ar­mour to at­tend the meet­ing and “plead guilty” be­fore his col­leagues for his un­in­ten­tion­al ac­tions.

The plea in mit­i­ga­tion would cause the lawyers to place him on a bond of good be­hav­iour for the rest of his term as AG, Khan said.

AG meets with DPP

Mean­while, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour on Thurs­day vis­it­ed the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard, where the two held dis­cus­sions on ad­min­is­tra­tive mat­ters in­volv­ing the op­er­a­tions of Gas­pard’s of­fice.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the AG’s Of­fice, af­ter meet­ing with Gas­pard and his staff, Ar­mour re­it­er­at­ed his com­mit­ment to the Of­fice of the DPP and as­sured re­spect would be main­tained.

He em­pha­sised that dis­cus­sions such as these were the first of many to come, with the ob­jec­tive of giv­ing fur­ther sup­port and en­hanc­ing avail­able re­sources.

It added that the AG high­light­ed and sup­port­ed the in­de­pen­dence of the Of­fice of the DPP as en­shrined in the Con­sti­tu­tion.

It said the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs (AGLA) al­so salut­ed the yeo­man ser­vice giv­en to the coun­try by the DPP’s staff, adding Ar­mour as­sured con­tin­ued ded­i­ca­tion to the staff, de­part­ments and statu­to­ry bod­ies un­der the re­mit of the min­istry.