Derek Achong

Drug Sou-Sou (DSS) founder Ker­ron Clarke will have to wait a while longer be­fore he learns the fate of his ap­peal over a mag­is­trate’s de­ci­sion to al­low the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to con­tin­ue to keep $656,200 in cash that was seized from him in one of the raids on his or­gan­i­sa­tion in 2020. 

Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed and Maria Wil­son re­served their de­ci­sion in Clarke’s ap­peal af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions from him and the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions dur­ing a hear­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

“Nei­ther par­ty would de­ny this is a com­par­a­tive­ly nov­el area of law, as it in­volves points of pub­lic im­por­tance,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed said as he not­ed he and his col­league need­ed time to prop­er­ly con­sid­er the le­gal is­sues in the case. 

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on Clarke’s be­half, his lawyer Rosario Sookdeo said the mag­is­trate who grant­ed de­ten­tion ex­ten­sions to the TTPS placed un­due weight on claims from in­ves­ti­ga­tors over the state of their con­tin­ued in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the seized cash. He claimed the mag­is­trate was al­so re­quired to equal­ly con­sid­er whether there were still valid rea­sons for Clarke to be de­nied ac­cess to the cash, in breach of his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to en­joy­ment of his prop­er­ty. 

“Clear­ly, the mag­is­trate pre­de­ter­mined the is­sue,” Sookdeo said, as he claimed the mag­is­trate did not al­low his client’s le­gal teams to present full sub­mis­sions be­fore she de­cid­ed the ex­ten­sion ap­pli­ca­tion.

He al­so claimed the TTPS did not dis­close enough in­for­ma­tion on the sta­tus of its in­ves­ti­ga­tion to al­low Clarke to prop­er­ly chal­lenge the cash de­ten­tion un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act. He al­so not­ed that the seized cash could not be linked to the two rel­a­tive­ly mi­nor crim­i­nal charges Clarke is fac­ing. 

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions, As­sis­tant DPP Sab­ri­na Dougdeen-Jaglal claimed that as the mag­is­trate ini­tial­ly or­dered the de­ten­tion, she did not have to fo­cus on whether there were still rea­son­able grounds for it to con­tin­ue, as they (the grounds) would have re­mained the same. 

While she ad­mit­ted there was some de­lay in dis­clos­ing in­for­ma­tion, she said that did not pre­vent Clarke from still bring­ing an ap­pli­ca­tion for the ear­ly re­lease of the cash, which was even­tu­al­ly re­ject­ed. 

In 2020, of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) and oth­er di­vi­sions raid­ed DSS’ head­quar­ters at Kath­leen Warn­er Dri­ve in La Hor­quet­ta and seized the cash. 

The mon­ey was lodged at the La Hor­quet­ta Po­lice Sta­tion but was lat­er re­turned, pur­port­ed­ly with­out au­tho­ri­sa­tion. Two se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers from Bar­ba­dos were re­cruit­ed to probe the in­ci­dent. The cash which is the sub­ject of the pend­ing for­fei­ture ap­pli­ca­tion was seized dur­ing sub­se­quent raids on the lo­ca­tion. 

Clarke was charged with two of­fences un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act and grant­ed $300,000 bail. One of the charges al­leges that be­tween May 2019 and Feb­ru­ary 2021, Clarke re­ceived a tele­vi­sion as col­lat­er­al for a loan, which the re­cip­i­ent was un­able to re­pay. 
He is al­so ac­cused of re­ceiv­ing $1,850 in in­ter­est on a loan while run­ning a money­len­der’s busi­ness with­out a li­cense. 

Some of the mon­ey seized from Clarke in the sub­se­quent raids has since been re­turned af­ter the TTPS was de­nied ap­pli­ca­tions to ex­tend its de­ten­tion. The TTPS has a pend­ing ap­pli­ca­tion to for­feit the cash un­der chal­lenge in the ap­peal and an ad­di­tion­al $6.4 mil­lion that was al­so seized. 

The Court of Ap­peal will give its de­ci­sion on a date to be an­nounced.