JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, July 20, 2025

AG’s Office gets $89.5M for rising costs

by

Dareece Polo
33 days ago
20250617
Minister of Justice Devesh Maharaj, left, and an official from the Tax Appeal Board at yesterday’s Standing Finance Committee Meeting in Parliament.

Minister of Justice Devesh Maharaj, left, and an official from the Tax Appeal Board at yesterday’s Standing Finance Committee Meeting in Parliament.

COURTESY:OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENT

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Mount­ing le­gal bills and a spike in white-col­lar crim­i­nal lit­i­ga­tion have prompt­ed the Gov­ern­ment to re­quest an ad­di­tion­al $89,492,221 for the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs.

Min­is­ter of Jus­tice and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, De­vesh Ma­haraj, said the fund­ing is ur­gent­ly need­ed to man­age a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty.

“The Ho­n­ourable At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has ad­vised me that there are now in­creased de­mands on the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem on the is­sue of white-col­lar crimes. He told me he’s par­tic­u­lar­ly swamped in this area at this point in time,” Ma­haraj said.

He re­called a Guardian Me­dia re­port from May 7, in which At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie lament­ed the lack of avail­able fund­ing to pay le­gal fees when he as­sumed of­fice.

“There was not enough mon­ey in the vote to even buy a dou­bles when he as­sumed of­fice. The en­tire vote was cleared out. There was no mon­ey re­main­ing to pay le­gal fees,” Ma­haraj said.

He said the vol­ume of le­gal fees was al­ready sig­nif­i­cant at the time the sup­ple­men­tary re­quest was draft­ed, but that the amount has since “bal­looned.”

“Each day we are re­ceiv­ing bills at the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al from both for­eign and lo­cal at­tor­neys and con­sul­tants that, quite frankly, has us a bit con­cerned.”

While an ad­di­tion­al $54 mil­lion of the re­quest­ed amount is in­tend­ed to cov­er le­gal fees, both out­stand­ing and in­com­ing, Ma­haraj said re­cent in­ter­nal up­dates show li­a­bil­i­ties may now be much high­er.

“The close fig­ure we have to­wards out­stand­ing bills, for­eign and lo­cal and con­sul­tants, has now in­creased to close to $100 if not $100 mil­lion.”

He added: “From a pre­lim­i­nary as­sess­ment of fees that have been paid over the 10 years, it has been per­haps one of the high­est pe­ri­ods, high­est amounts paid out to lo­cal and for­eign at­tor­neys and con­sul­tants. And as I just in­di­cat­ed, we were pre­sent­ed by the per­ma­nent sec­re­taries this morn­ing (yes­ter­day) of a new fig­ure, which was added on to what was pre­sent­ed to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance for this sup­ple­men­ta­tion. So, we don’t know how much more is ex­ist­ing out in the wood­works and how much more is go­ing to hit us.”

The Gov­ern­ment could not de­fin­i­tive­ly say what per­cent­age of the $54 mil­lion would cov­er out­stand­ing fees ver­sus fu­ture oblig­a­tions, or whether new le­gal briefs had been is­sued by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In ad­di­tion to le­gal fees, the re­quest in­clud­ed $1.3 mil­lion for con­tract em­ploy­ment.

Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein said this will fund the salaries of em­ploy­ees with­in the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly those hired to sup­port Glob­al Fo­rum com­pli­ance ef­forts.

“This ap­pro­pri­a­tion will meet our con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions un­til Sep­tem­ber 2025 be­cause the for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance did not give enough al­lo­ca­tions to­wards this line item with re­spect to con­tract em­ploy­ment,” Ho­sein ex­plained, re­spond­ing to a ques­tion from Arou­ca/Lopinot MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les on whether those con­tracts would ex­pire soon.

Ho­sein stressed that T&T re­mains on the Glob­al Fo­rum black­list and reaf­firmed Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to ad­dress­ing the is­sue.

Ma­haraj al­so re­vealed that 323 in­di­vid­u­als are cur­rent­ly em­ployed on short-term con­tracts. He said this was un­changed since the April 28th Gen­er­al Elec­tion. Asked if any­one had been ter­mi­nat­ed with­in the last six weeks, he ac­knowl­edged: “There have been some that have been ter­mi­nat­ed, I un­der­stand.”

He said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11 em­ploy­ees had been dis­missed from the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion, Law Re­vi­sion Com­mis­sion, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Sec­re­tari­at and the Min­is­ter’s Sec­re­tari­at.

In re­sponse to Op­po­si­tion scruti­ny, Ho­sein pushed back, ac­cus­ing the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion of hand­pick­ing at­tor­neys and rack­ing up the very le­gal fees they now ques­tion.

“It is hyp­o­crit­i­cal for the PNM to ask about le­gal fees,” Ho­sein said, ref­er­enc­ing what he de­scribed as “eat-ah-food PNM at­tor­neys” re­tained by the for­mer gov­ern­ment.

At that point, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly in­ter­vened and re­quest­ed the chair­man’s in­ter­ven­tion to de-es­ca­late the ex­changes.

Mean­while, Gon­za­les ques­tioned whether Gov­ern­ment’s in­creased al­lo­ca­tion for le­gal fees would cov­er mat­ters such as the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port cor­rup­tion case and lit­i­ga­tion in­volv­ing at­tor­neys in the Vin­cent Nel­son v At­tor­ney Gen­er­al mat­ter. How­ev­er, of­fi­cials were un­able to pro­vide a de­fin­i­tive an­swer.

“If it falls with­in that cat­e­go­ry, of course he will pay it,” Gon­za­les said, re­fer­ring to white-col­lar crime cas­es.

Ma­haraj fur­ther con­firmed that $16.8 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed for fees payable to ex­ter­nal at­tor­neys sup­port­ing the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) but could not say whether this amount in­clud­ed fund­ing for the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­BD) cor­rup­tion case. Nor could he con­firm whether the al­lo­ca­tion would cov­er le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion in cas­es in­volv­ing Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored