Gail Alexan­der

Ten lo­cal at­tor­ney "friends" of the PNM –in­clud­ing close rel­a­tives of a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter – re­ceived fees from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's De­part­ment to­talling over $84 mil­lion be­tween 2001 and 2010, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said yes­ter­day. Mak­ing the claim dur­ing yes­ter­day's 2010-2011 Sen­ate bud­get de­bate, Ram­lo­gan al­so said le­gal fees, to­talling $624 mil­lion, were paid by min­istries and state di­vi­sions "main­ly to friends of the PNM" (sic) dur­ing De­cem­ber 2002 to Au­gust 2010. Re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley's claim that $13 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed to the AG's of­fice to pay Ram­lo­gan's al­leged "friends" who are con­duct­ing probes, Ram­lo­gan claimed the hus­band, broth­er and broth­er-in=law of a for­mer min­is­ter, as well as cur­rent PNM Sen­a­tors Fitzger­ald Hinds and Faris Al Rawi, re­ceived le­gal briefs from the past PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Ram­lo­gan added: "When the Op­po­si­tion Leader said I hired my friends, what he failed to say is that the ad­min­is­tra­tion which he was a part of had no qualms in hir­ing their friends.

"Be­fore we start throw­ing stones, let us ex­am­ine the record of the par­ty he leads. What is good for one can­not be wrong for the oth­er. "Dur­ing 2001 to May 2010, the to­tal le­gal fees paid by my min­istry to just 10 lo­cal le­gal friends of the PNM amount­ed to just over $84 mil­lion...10 per­son's names reg­i­men­tal­ly ap­pear each year." He said lec­tur­ers at law fac­ul­ties sud­den­ly got "juicy " briefs and firms, with dis­tinct iden­ti­fi­able po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions, al­so re­ceived work.

On PNM sen­a­tors, Hinds and Al Rawi, the AG said one was on a pan­el han­dling FCB work. He claimed Hinds did le­gal work for the NWRHA. He said the hus­band of a for­mer min­is­ter al­so worked for the Health Min­istry. Ram­lo­gan said the firm of Alexan­der, Je­re­mie and Co, to which the for­mer AG is af­fil­i­at­ed, did work for the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board when the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al's De­part­ment could do such work. Ram­lo­gan said his min­istry had to meet a "a huge le­gal bill" left by his pre­de­ces­sor, amount­ing to $16.01 mil­lion. He said last month the Eng­lish law firm of Charles Rus­sell sub­mit­ted a bill for out­stand­ing fees for 2003 to 2010, to­talling TT$7.57 mil­lion, Ram­lo­gan added: "From the date the gen­er­al elec­tion was called to the date of the elec­tion, the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al paid out over $20 mil­lion in le­gal fees with­in 90 days.

"But for State so­lic­i­tors in Lon­don, Charles Rus­sell, they could not find the mon­ey to pay the bill." Ram­lo­gan said the Gov­ern­ment's cor­rup­tion probe would cost tax­pay­ers mil­lions of dol­lars "but the cost of weed­ing out cor­rup­tion can nev­er be mea­sured mere­ly by dol­lar val­ue spent." He said he has not paid "one red cent" to any at­tor­ney or foren­sic ex­pert on the probes. Ram­lo­gan said he would not be in­tim­i­dat­ed or ha­rassed by "those who have co­coa in the sun and seek to rail­road these cor­rup­tion probes...emp­ty protests about the cost of the probes re­mind me of the say­ing 'do so don't like so.'"

Ram­lo­gan said he was con­fi­dent about the team he picked.

"They are in fact an A-team. They're work­ing in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau." he added. He said an Amer­i­can foren­sic firm, AL­IX Part­ners, had been se­lect­ed to as­sist. Ram­lo­gan said the fight against cor­rup­tion would put his min­istry "against friends and po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents," He added: "Our ad­ver­saries are well fi­nanced and high­ly mo­ti­vat­ed. In some cas­es, they are the very elite in this so­ci­ety but we can ill af­ford to lose this bat­tle."

Hinds, Al Rawi re­spond

PNM Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds has said he re­ceived four le­gal briefs from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's di­vi­sion to­talling less than $200,000 in eight years. Fol­low­ing the Sen­ate, Hinds said one brief was for $166,000 and three oth­ers for $10,000 each for mag­is­te­r­i­al court work. One brief per­tained to the NWRHA which his firm han­dled. Hinds claimed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan had ma­li­cious­ly "lumped" him with oth­er at­tor­neys. PNM Sen­a­tor Faris Al Rawi said: "I have nev­er in my pro­fes­sion­al life done a state brief. I'll be mak­ing a per­son­al state­ment on this in the Sen­ate call­ing on the AG to say which state bod­ies have al­leged­ly paid me. This is an ir­re­spon­si­ble state­ment on his part, sul­ly­ing my good name as it is sim­ply un­true."