Ak­ile Si­mon

Act­ing Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard has of­fi­cial­ly dis­con­tin­ued all crim­i­nal charges against Amer­i­can busi­ness­man Ronald Birk in re­la­tion to the Pi­ar­co Air­port cor­rup­tion case.

That dis­clo­sure was made by Se­nior Mag­is­trate Ejen­ny Es­pinet when the mat­ter came up be­fore her in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Es­pinet doc­u­ments, filed in the court, from the DPP's of­fice stat­ed the DPP was dis­con­tin­u­ing all charges brought against Birk. No rea­son was giv­en for the dis­con­tin­u­ance of the charges but sources in the DPP's of­fice con­firmed an ex­clu­sive re­port in Thurs­day's T&T Guardian which re­port­ed that Birk, 69, de­cid­ed to turn a state wit­ness in the mat­ter. He ar­rived in T&T last Wednes­day and it was an­tic­i­pat­ed he would have ap­peared be­fore Es­pinet yes­ter­day. Se­nior Coun­sel Gilbert Pe­ter­son is lead­ing the pros­e­cu­tion's case.

At yes­ter­day's hear­ing, two ex­ec­u­tives of South­ern Com­merce Bank, in Tam­pa, Flori­da, took the wit­ness stand and gave ev­i­dence in the mat­ter. They were Dana Payne-White, vice pres­i­dent, and ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent, Eliz­a­beth King Roberts. Pe­ter­son told the court he in­tend­ed to call two for­eign wit­ness­es from Cana­da and re­quest­ed if the wit­ness­es could ap­pear through a video con­fer­ence link. Mag­is­trate Es­pinet ap­peared sur­prised by Pe­ter­son's ap­pli­ca­tion. He said at­tempts would be made to have the wit­ness­es brought to Trinidad if the video link proved fu­tile. The mat­ter was then ad­journed to Thurs­day.