An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The con­sti­tu­tion­al claim by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan re­gard­ing his crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion as it re­lates to al­leged wit­ness tam­per­ing has been dis­missed by the High Court.

The rul­ing by Jus­tice Na­dia Kan­ga­loo in the Port-of-Spain High Court now clears the way for au­thor­i­ties to pro­ceed with crim­i­nal charges against Ram­lo­gan at the lev­el of the Mag­is­trates’ Court.

Re­spond­ing to the rul­ing hours lat­er, Ram­lo­gan told Guardian Me­dia, “We in­tend to ap­peal the mat­ter.”

De­liv­er­ing the judg­ment in a vir­tu­al hear­ing yes­ter­day, Kan­ga­loo dis­missed Ram­lo­gan’s com­plaint that there was a con­spir­a­cy against him, as she found there was no ma­li­cious in­tent on the part of the po­lice to ob­tain search war­rants.

She al­so ruled there was no ev­i­dence of an in­abil­i­ty by Ram­lo­gan to de­fend him­self, adding that the war­rants were law­ful­ly sought and noth­ing had pre­clud­ed the po­lice from ob­tain­ing such war­rants if there was rea­son­able sus­pi­cion a crime had been com­mit­ted.

Kan­ga­loo al­so dis­missed his claim of en­ti­tle­ment to com­pen­sa­tion for al­leged breach­es of his rights as “the court has not found that the claimant has es­tab­lished a breach of his rights.”

Ram­lo­gan was charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice and ob­struc­tion of jus­tice in 2017. The charges stemmed from Ram­lo­gan’s al­leged at­tempt to pre­vent David West from giv­ing ev­i­dence against him in a defama­tion case against the then op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley in 2014, in ex­change for be­ing ap­point­ed as head of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA).

West cur­rent­ly holds the post of PCA di­rec­tor. Ram­lo­gan had al­leged that the State had vi­o­lat­ed cer­tain con­sti­tu­tion­al rights when it col­lect­ed ev­i­dence against him un­der the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act and the In­dictable Of­fences (Pre­lim­i­nary En­quiry) Act.

He fur­ther al­leged that one of the High Court judges who had grant­ed ex parte war­rants to the po­lice un­der the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act was bi­ased against him.

Kan­ga­loo, how­ev­er, found no con­sti­tu­tion­al breach­es had oc­curred as al­leged by Ram­lo­gan and that the al­le­ga­tion of bias could not be made out of the law or the facts.

As a re­sult, she dis­missed Ram­lo­gan’s claim in its en­tire­ty and or­dered the State’s costs to be paid by Ram­lo­gan. The al­le­ga­tion against Ram­lo­gan stemmed from claims by West that he was ap­proached by Ram­lo­gan to with­draw his wit­ness state­ment in the defama­tion case against Row­ley and that Ram­lo­gan used threats and bribery to per­suade him not to give ev­i­dence.

Ram­lo­gan was ac­cused of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice as a re­sult. The of­fences were al­leged to have tak­en place in 2014 while Ram­lo­gan held the post of AG, and while for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, who is al­so a wit­ness in the case, was serv­ing as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter.

For­mer act­ing po­lice com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in Feb­ru­ary 2015 af­ter for­mer prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar fired Ram­lo­gan and Grif­fith, who had been mem­bers of her Cab­i­net.

Just as the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry in­to the charges against Ram­lo­gan was ex­pect­ed to be­gin in 2022, his at­tor­neys re­quest­ed a re­fer­ral to the High Court, and for­mer Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by Ear­le-Cad­dle agreed af­ter be­ing told that if the chal­lenge was suc­cess­ful, the State might not be able to con­tin­ue with the pros­e­cu­tion against Ram­lo­gan.

In his con­sti­tu­tion­al claim, Ram­lo­gan con­tend­ed his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, in­clud­ing the rights to his pri­vate and fam­i­ly life, were breached when three High Court judges and a mag­is­trate grant­ed war­rants for the po­lice to tap his phone lines in 2019.

He al­so con­tend­ed there was an un­law­ful is­suance of war­rants by one of the judges for the in­ter­cep­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion da­ta; the un­law­ful re­trieval and col­lec­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tions da­ta war­rants un­der the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act (IO­CA); and the ap­par­ent bias of the judge who is­sued five in­ter­cep­tion or­ders in 2019.

In her rul­ing, Kan­ga­loo said there was no ap­par­ent bias on the part of the judge and that Ram­lo­gan had not yet demon­strat­ed that he suf­fered prej­u­dice. She said the is­sue sur­round­ing the ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty of the ev­i­dence ob­tained via the war­rants had not yet been de­ter­mined.

And while she ac­knowl­edged Ram­lo­gan’s right to a fair tri­al, she said he had not demon­strat­ed that he suf­fered any loss by ob­tain­ing the war­rants, as the Mag­is­trates’ Court was yet to rule on the ev­i­den­tial ob­jec­tions.

She said it was on­ly af­ter this was done that Ram­lo­gan could re­turn to the High Court if he had any oth­er com­plaints.