Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing em­bat­tled Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass are seek­ing to re­ly on re­cent state­ments made by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert about her han­dling of a $2.6 bil­lion un­der­es­ti­ma­tion of rev­enue in the na­tion­al ac­counts.

Ram­dass’ lawyer Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, ref­er­enced the state­ments made by Im­bert in Par­lia­ment, ear­li­er this week, as his client’s case over her abil­i­ty to seek in­de­pen­dent le­gal ad­vice on the im­passe be­tween her of­fice and Im­bert’s min­istry came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice West­min James, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Ram­dass al­so has a pend­ing ju­di­cial re­view case over a Cab­i­net ap­point­ed probe led by re­tired judge David Har­ris, which was ini­ti­at­ed af­ter the de­ba­cle be­gan ear­li­er this year when Ram­dass high­light­ed the fi­nan­cial dis­crep­an­cy in her an­nu­al re­port.

Jus­tice James re­fused Ram­dass leave to pur­sue her case but his de­ci­sion was sub­se­quent­ly over­turned by the Ap­peal Court.

The Cab­i­net lodged a fi­nal ap­peal over the pre­lim­i­nary is­sue which is ex­pect­ed to be heard by the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil in ear­ly No­vem­ber.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s hear­ing, there was a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion be­tween Ram­lo­gan and Se­nior Coun­sel Rus­sell Mar­tineau, who led the le­gal team for the AG’s Of­fice, over the rel­e­vance of Im­bert’s most re­cent com­ments.

In lay­ing a spe­cial re­port from Ram­dass in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day, Im­bert said: “It is the Gov­ern­ment’s view that the Spe­cial Re­port of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al on the Pub­lic ac­counts for the Fi­nan­cial Year 2023 on­ly adds fu­el to the fire, cre­ates more un­nec­es­sary pub­lic con­fu­sion and does not sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly ad­dress the core is­sue that arose with the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s orig­i­nal re­port on the 2023 Ac­counts, which is a $2.6 bil­lion dis­crep­an­cy in rev­enue, and which, in our view, has been com­pre­hen­sive­ly cleared up.”

Jus­tice James al­so ques­tioned the move but even­tu­al­ly ad­vised Ram­lo­gan to file an of­fi­cial ap­pli­ca­tion over the use of the state­ments, which will be con­sid­ered be­fore the case goes to tri­al.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Jus­tice James al­so ex­pressed reser­va­tions over the le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion case as he not­ed that he was con­cerned that he may have to weigh in on is­sues be­ing con­sid­ered by the probe, which is be­ing sep­a­rate­ly chal­lenged.

“I will have to com­ment on whether the cir­cum­stances re­quire such a thing. I want to be care­ful be­cause I do not want things that I say and find­ings that I have made to af­fect oth­er things,” Jus­tice James said.

Seek­ing to al­lay Jus­tice James’ con­cerns, Ram­lo­gan not­ed that he was sim­ply asked to de­ter­mine whether there were suf­fi­cient grounds for Ram­dass to re­quest in­de­pen­dent le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

“If you find that the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al act­ed un­rea­son­ably then that would be the end of the case,” Ram­lo­gan said.

Jus­tice James gave the par­ties dead­lines for the fil­ing of ev­i­dence and sub­mis­sions and ad­journed the case to Jan­u­ary 13, when he is ex­pect­ed to re­solve ev­i­den­tial ob­jec­tions.

The dis­pute be­tween Ram­dass and min­istry of­fi­cials arose in April af­ter the min­istry sought to de­liv­er amend­ed pub­lic ac­counts, which were meant to ex­plain a re­port­ed $2.6 bil­lion un­der­es­ti­ma­tion in rev­enue.

In lay­ing the spe­cial re­port in Par­lia­ment, Im­bert op­posed com­ments made by Ram­dass in a re­cent af­fi­davit, in which she claimed that her abil­i­ty to per­form a prop­er au­dit and ver­i­fy the is­sues that caused the er­ror was ham­pered as she was al­leged­ly blocked by the Cen­tral Bank from ac­cess­ing its elec­tron­ic cheque clear­ing sys­tem.