GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

In a dis­clo­sure dur­ing T&T’s 2025 Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view last Wednes­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie re­vealed a $200 mil­lion “black hole” in le­gal fees with­in his min­istry—a rev­e­la­tion that has ig­nit­ed con­cerns over fis­cal dis­ci­pline, pro­cure­ment prac­tices and the broad­er cul­ture of ac­count­abil­i­ty in pub­lic fi­nance.

Je­re­mie al­leged that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of these fees were paid to in­di­vid­u­als close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the for­mer prime min­is­ter, in­clud­ing golf­ing part­ners, be­fore the last gen­er­al elec­tion.

He em­pha­sised that many of these pay­ments were made with­out clear ev­i­dence of val­ue re­ceived, and he has since halt­ed the ac­cep­tance of new in­voic­es.

With tax­pay­ers now foot­ing the bill, the is­sue rais­es ques­tions about trans­paren­cy and whether the pub­lic is re­ceiv­ing val­ue for mon­ey.

Stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing for­mer head of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR), Mooni­lal Lalchan told the Busi­ness Guardian that peo­ple may start to ques­tion whether their tax­es are be­ing put to good use, not­ing that this could al­so erode trust in pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions.

“...It lends to no ac­count­abil­i­ty, I would say, in a nut­shell...No ac­count­abil­i­ty could al­so mean cor­rup­tion... It could lead to a lot of prac­tices that are not ac­cept­able in terms of best prac­tice and so on, which by virtue of the loose­ness of the sit­u­a­tion could lead to cor­rup­tion or col­lu­sion, more or less,” Lalchan said.

He point­ed to the fact that Sec­tion 7 of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, ex­clud­ed le­gal ser­vices mean­ing it is not un­der full scruti­ny, among oth­er ser­vices.

Stat­ing that the the mat­ter of the “black hole” was brought to the fore by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Lalchan said the AG should there­fore, if he is con­cerned, deal with it with a lev­el of alacrity.

Mean­while, Afra Ray­mond, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC), said he is not at all in­spired by the dis­clo­sure of “this or that le­gal fee etc,” as he em­pha­sised that what is need is a clear po­si­tion from the UNC on the re­peal of those “dam­ag­ing” ex­emp­tions from the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act (PPDP­PA).

He said these must now be re­pealed so that the pub­lic in­ter­est could be well-served by in­de­pen­dent over­sight by the OPR, as in­tend­ed when the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP), of which the cur­rent rul­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress was part, passed the par­ent leg­is­la­tion – Act No 1 of 2015.

If the UNC means to do bet­ter, it has to do dif­fer­ent­ly, Ray­mond added.

“I am re­fer­ring to the fact that on Fri­day De­cem­ber 4, 2020 our Par­lia­ment passed the third set of amend­ments to the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act (The Act). These changes were a se­ri­ous blow to the long-term cam­paign for prop­er con­trol over trans­ac­tions in pub­lic mon­ey and are ex­treme­ly detri­men­tal to the pub­lic in­ter­est.

“Le­gal and ac­count­ing/au­dit­ing ser­vices are es­sen­tial to gov­ern trans­ac­tions in pub­lic mon­ey as re­quired by the Act, so how does one jus­ti­fy ex­clud­ing those from OPR over­sight?,” Ray­mond said.

He fur­ther ex­plained that the re­moval of le­gal, ac­count­ing/au­dit­ing, med­ical fees and fi­nan­cial ser­vices from OPR over­sight was ris­i­ble when one con­sid­ers the strong and re­peat­ed state­ments as to con­cerns over the al­leged le­gal fees scan­dals.

Ray­mond al­so not­ed that in the “bad-old-days” of the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion then At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (AG), Faris Al Rawi, was “mak­ing a meal of the se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions of mas­sive le­gal fees fraud against for­mer PP AG Ananad Ram­lo­gan SC and Ger­ald Ramdeen – the sum al­leged­ly mis-ap­pro­pri­at­ed was in the $1.0 bil­lion re­gion...at the very same time, the then Fi­nance Min­is­ter, Colm Im­bert, was ex­empt­ing ex­pen­di­ture on le­gal fees from the over­sight of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR). Lit­er­al­ly in­cred­i­ble, but that is what re­al­ly hap­pened in this coun­try.”

Now, he added there is a fresh­ly-elect­ed gov­ern­ment, with its AG mak­ing “loud claims” about ex­ces­sive le­gal fees paid by the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, with si­lence on the UNC po­si­tion on those dam­ag­ing 2020 ex­emp­tions from the PPDP­PA.

Ray­mond al­so not­ed that dur­ing his 2018 lit­i­ga­tion to ob­tain the To­ba­go San­dals MoU un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, the State spent “six times more le­gal fees” than he did as the ap­pli­cant, on­ly for Deb­o­rah Peake SC to con­cede ac­cess to the MOU in the very first hear­ing.

“She spent less than 30 sec­onds on her feet. A to­tal of $545,000 of pub­lic mon­ey was spent in fu­tile at­tempts to con­ceal a doc­u­ment which was sup­pos­ed­ly ‘no se­cret’...” he added.

Econ­o­mist Dr Vanus James who al­so shared his in­sights, said sen­sa­tion­al­ism and fin­ger point­ing aside, the AG’s rev­e­la­tion sure­ly ex­em­pli­fied the abuse of pub­lic trust by a Cab­i­net and, as in all such cas­es, should raise alarm bells.

“This is es­pe­cial­ly true in the con­text of the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis and bud­get ex­i­gen­cies of the coun­try,” he added.

How­ev­er, he al­so echoed that cit­i­zens have a much big­ger fish to fry -the ab­sence of prop­er con­sti­tu­tion­al mech­a­nisms for ef­fec­tive ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy and over­sight of the Cab­i­net and its man­age­ment of Par­lia­ment’s leg­isla­tive and ex­ec­u­tive func­tions.

“The re­al prob­lem high­light­ed by the ‘black hole’ is that Cab­i­net con­trols every­thing un­der the au­thor­i­ty giv­en by Sec­tion 75(1) of our con­sti­tu­tion.

“It can block the flow of in­for­ma­tion to the pub­lic, in­clud­ing in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by whistle­blow­ers. It can pre­vent scruti­ny of its ex­ec­u­tive de­ci­sions. It can pre­vent ac­tion on rev­e­la­tions by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al. And, since it al­so con­trols law­mak­ing, it can pre­vent the en­act­ment of leg­is­la­tion to set lim­its on its ca­pac­i­ty to abuse pow­er and hood­wink all in­ter­est­ed stake­hold­ers. In oth­er words, there is no prop­er con­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ment for over­sight of the Cab­i­net, none for giv­ing re­al ef­fect to the much tout­ed ‘col­lec­tive ac­count­abil­i­ty’ to Par­lia­ment,” James ex­plained.

Go­ing for­ward

Clear guide­lines.

This was the rec­om­men­da­tion from Lalchan as he main­tained, “ With­out any clear guide­lines, they can go about and choose whichev­er lawyer they want for what­ev­er rea­son and so there is no guide­line to sup­port it.”

Lalchan, who left of­fice in 2023, said he would have been on record as say­ing that he did not agree with those ex­emp­tions from un­der the Act.

“And I think now that these fig­ures are com­ing out in the open, you see rea­sons why there should be pro­tec­tion as to how we spend tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey and not just have these ex­emp­tions with­out any guide­lines,” he added.

While his of­fice had sup­port­ed many of the changes, Lalchan specif­i­cal­ly ob­ject­ed to the amend­ment of Sec­tion 7.2, which ex­empts Gov­ern­ment-to-Gov­ern­ment con­tracts from over­sight. He em­pha­sised that these were not rec­om­men­da­tions from his of­fice and aligned him­self with civ­il so­ci­ety groups op­pos­ing that change

In of­fer­ing his take on a pos­si­ble so­lu­tion he said ei­ther have the leg­is­la­tion backed up by prop­er guide­lines or re­peal those amend­ments.

BOX

“...Ex­clu­sion of Ser­vices

The in­ser­tion Sec­tion 7(5) of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015 of T&T.

This sec­tion was in­tro­duced to pro­vide ex­emp­tions for cer­tain ser­vices when they are ren­dered to pub­lic bod­ies or state-owned en­ter­pris­es. Es­sen­tial­ly, it means that not all ser­vices pro­vid­ed to these en­ti­ties are sub­ject to the full scope of the pro­cure­ment rules un­der the Act.

This cre­at­ed ex­emp­tions for these ser­vices pro­vid­ed to ‘pub­lic bod­ies or state-owned en­ter­pris­es’ –

· (a) le­gal ser­vices;

· (b) debt fi­nanc­ing ser­vices for the na­tion­al bud­get;

· (c) ac­count­ing and au­dit­ing ser­vices;

· (d) med­ical emer­gency or oth­er sched­uled med­ical ser­vices; or

· (e) such oth­er ser­vices as the Min­is­ter may, by Or­der, de­ter­mine.