Hamid Ghany

Last week, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion pub­lished a No­tice in the dai­ly news­pa­pers pro­vid­ing a list of names of peo­ple in pub­lic life "who have failed to file De­c­la­ra­tions of In­come, As­sets and Li­a­bil­i­ties and State­ments of Reg­is­tra­ble In­ter­ests with the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion."

The list of names cov­ers the pe­ri­od 2003�2014 and re­veals a wide cross sec­tion of peo­ple who are drawn from all po­lit­i­cal per­sua­sions or no iden­ti­fi­able per­sua­sion.

Many of the peo­ple named have been cit­ed be­fore in this an­nu­al ex­er­cise car­ried out by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. This is a con­tin­u­ing process and ap­par­ent­ly there has been lit­tle suc­cess in hav­ing these peo­ple file their de­c­la­ra­tions and state­ments with the com­mis­sion over the 12-year pe­ri­od cov­ered by the rev­e­la­tion of these names.

On the flip side of this, there have been very few pros­e­cu­tions against peo­ple in re­la­tion to fail­ure to make cer­tain de­c­la­ra­tions over the years. On­ly two Wednes­days ago, for­mer min­is­ter of en­er­gy in the Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion, Fin­bar Gan­gar, had the charges laid against him dis­missed.

He had been car­ry­ing that bur­den since June 2004, when he was charged un­der the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act in re­spect of al­le­ga­tions that he failed to make cer­tain de­c­la­ra­tions. The best that the State could say when the mat­ter came up for hear­ing for the umpteenth time was that the pros­e­cu­tion had no ev­i­dence to of­fer against the ac­cused.

Ac­cord­ing to re­porter Derek Achong writ­ing in the Guardian on May 19 in­stant:

"For­mer Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Fin­bar Gan­gar yes­ter­day was freed of two charges for fail­ing to de­clare his for­eign bank ac­counts to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles dis­charged Gan­gar in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates' Court af­ter pros­e­cu­tors from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) in­di­cat­ed that they could of­fer no ev­i­dence against him. State pros­e­cu­tor Nor­ma Pe­ters ex­plained to Charles her of­fice had ev­i­den­tial is­sues due to the pro­tract­ed charges which were laid on Gan­gar al­most 12 years ago."

Be­tween the list of names of peo­ple in pub­lic life pub­lished last week and the de­ci­sion of the mag­is­trate in the Fin­bar Gan­gar mat­ter the week be­fore, it is very ap­par­ent that the en­tire in­tegri­ty process in this coun­try is in sham­bles. The fact that the best that the State could do af­ter 12 years of pros­e­cu­tion is to of­fer no ev­i­dence against the ac­cused says it all.

How­ev­er, Fin­bar Gan­gar is not the on­ly per­son to be faced with a lengthy pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al process. For­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day al­so had his fair share of dif­fi­cul­ties with al­le­ga­tions of fail­ure to de­clare as­sets and li­a­bil­i­ties to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion be­fore he was fi­nal­ly dis­charged in 2012 by Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Mur­ray and the sub­se­quent ap­pli­ca­tion for ju­di­cial re­view against Mur­ray's de­ci­sion by the DPP was dis­missed by Jus­tice James Aboud in 2014.

Bas­deo Pan­day was charged on Sep­tem­ber 18, 2002, in the midst of the 2002 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign. The gen­er­al elec­tion was held on Oc­to­ber 7, 2002, and the lay­ing of the charges dur­ing that cam­paign had an im­pact on the court of pub­lic opin­ion on elec­tion day, long be­fore the law courts han­dled his mat­ter.

The case start­ed be­fore then chief mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc Nicholls in 2003 and the case did not ac­tu­al­ly com­mence un­til March 2006, af­ter a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion by Pan­day had been dis­missed in the in­ter­im. On April 24, 2006, Mc Nicholls found Pan­day guilty of the charges and sen­tenced him to two years in jail with hefty fines.

Pan­day ap­pealed the con­vic­tion and on March 20, 2007, the Court of Ap­peal over­turned the con­vic­tion im­posed by Mc Nicholls on the ground of bias by Mc Nicholls against Pan­day and or­dered a re­tri­al. The re­tri­al was op­posed by Pan­day who ap­pealed to the Privy Coun­cil and they dis­missed his ap­peal on April 9, 2008.

In a re­lat­ed mat­ter, the State dis­con­tin­ued its pros­e­cu­tion against then chief jus­tice Sat­nar­ine Shar­ma on March 5, 2007, be­cause its star wit­ness Mc Nicholls went in­to the wit­ness box to give ev­i­dence against Shar­ma and then re­fused to do so caus­ing the case to col­lapse.

Mean­while, the re­tri­al or­dered by the Court of Ap­peal for Pan­day was list­ed for Ju­ly 31, 2007, be­fore Mag­is­trate Ejen­ny Es­pinet. Pan­day sought ju­di­cial re­view of her re­fusal to re­cuse her­self. Madam Jus­tice Ju­dith Jones over­turned Es­pinet's de­ci­sion on No­vem­ber 24, 2009, and re­ferred it to an­oth­er mag­is­trate.

On June 13, 2011, the sec­ond re­tri­al start­ed be­fore Mag­is­trate Mar­cia Mur­ray and on June 26, 2012, she dis­missed the case against Pan­day on the ground of abuse of process as the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion had failed to ap­point a tri­bunal to in­ves­ti­gate the al­le­ga­tions against Pan­day be­fore pros­e­cu­tion.

In­stead of an ap­peal, the DPP pro­ceed­ed by way of ju­di­cial re­view which was filed on Sep­tem­ber 21, 2012 and on April 11, 2014, Mr Jus­tice James Aboud re­fused the grant of any or­der per­mit­ting a con­tin­u­a­tion of the pros­e­cu­tion against Pan­day.

Af­ter 12 years in the court sys­tem, both UNC pub­lic of­fi­cials, Bas­deo Pan­day (2002-2014) and Fin­bar Gan­gar (2004-2016), even­tu­al­ly got clo­sure ei­ther on the ground of abuse of process or no ev­i­dence be­ing of­fered.