Busi­ness­man Steve Fer­gu­son has launched yet an­oth­er bid to at­tempt to stymie the Gov­ern­ment's move to en­force a US$131 mil­lion judg­ment in a Unit­ed States case over al­leged cor­rup­tion re­lat­ed to the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Last week, Fer­gu­son's le­gal team, led by British King's Coun­sel Ed­ward Fitzger­ald, filed an ap­pli­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion to stop the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al from seek­ing to have him pro­vide a de­po­si­tion in the pre­lim­i­nary stages of en­force­ment pro­ceed­ings against him in re­la­tion to the US judg­ment.

In May, last year, Mi­a­mi-Dade Cir­cuit Court Judge Reem­ber­to Di­az en­tered fi­nal judg­ment against Fer­gu­son, for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung and US busi­ness­man Raul Gutier­rez Jr for US$131,318,840.47 af­ter a ju­ry up­held a civ­il as­set re­cov­ery case over crim­i­nal con­duct linked to the air­port project.

Fer­gu­son ap­pealed the out­come and un­suc­cess­ful­ly re­sist­ed at­tempts to have him dis­close his US as­sets as part of en­force­ment pro­ceed­ings.

He al­so filed a con­sti­tu­tion­al case chal­leng­ing the State's han­dling of the US case.

In March, High Court Judge Na­dia Kan­ga­loo re­ject­ed an as­so­ci­at­ed in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion seek­ing to stop the en­force­ment pro­ceed­ings from go­ing ahead be­fore Jus­tice Di­az in the US.

When Fer­gu­son's lat­est le­gal chal­lenge came up for hear­ing, yes­ter­day morn­ing, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad ques­tioned whether he had the ju­ris­dic­tion to con­sid­er it.

"I have some sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns. This re­quires this court to in­ter­fere with pro­ceed­ings tak­ing place in an­oth­er ju­ris­dic­tion," Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

He al­so ques­tioned whether the ap­pli­ca­tion was an abuse of process af­ter his col­league weighed in on the is­sue and her de­ci­sion was not sub­se­quent­ly ap­pealed.

Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes, who led the State's le­gal team, agreed.

Mendes said: "This ap­pli­ca­tion is doomed to fail. An­oth­er ap­pli­ca­tion was made in sep­a­rate pro­ceed­ings seek­ing to stop en­force­ment pro­ceed­ings in Mi­a­mi and it was de­nied."

Mendes al­so point­ed out that af­ter Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo's rul­ing, his client gave an un­der­tak­ing that while it would con­tin­ue to take pre­lim­i­nary steps for en­force­ment, it would not seek to ini­ti­ate the ac­tu­al process af­ter the sub­stan­tive case be­fore her is de­ter­mined.

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions, Fitzger­ald claimed that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad does have the ju­ris­dic­tion to de­ter­mine the ap­pli­ca­tion as it deals with con­duct be­ing en­gaged by a lo­cal en­ti­ty.

"We say that the court's ju­ris­dic­tion aris­es from the fact that it is AG from Trinidad that is mak­ing ap­pli­ca­tions in the US," Fitzger­ald said.

He al­so point­ed out that Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo is cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing an ap­pli­ca­tion for her to re­cuse her­self from the sub­stan­tive case based on a pur­port­ed con­nec­tion to Keui Tung's for­mer com­pan­ion Re­nee Pierre, who is a de­fen­dant in pro­tract­ed pend­ing lo­cal crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings over the air­port project.

Fitzger­ald stat­ed that Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo is ex­pect­ed to de­cide on her pos­si­ble re­cusal six days af­ter the State's ap­pli­ca­tion for Fer­gu­son to pro­vide the de­po­si­tion is heard in Mi­a­mi on Oc­to­ber 24.

"The ear­li­er rul­ing was some­what un­der­mined by the new rev­e­la­tions," Fitzger­ald said.

De­spite the pre­lim­i­nary con­cerns, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ad­journed the case to next Mon­day to give the State time to re­spond to the lat­est le­gal pro­ceed­ings.

In the lat­est ap­pli­ca­tion, Fer­gu­son is claim­ing that the State's en­force­ment ac­tions in­clud­ing re­quest­ing that he tes­ti­fy over the pay­ment of fees to his at­tor­neys are un­law­ful.

The US law­suit re­lates to the al­leged fraud and in­fla­tion of two con­struc­tion con­tracts and a main­te­nance con­tract for the air­port.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, was dis­qual­i­fied from be­ing this coun­try's rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the case be­cause he down­played his role in briefly rep­re­sent­ing Kuei Tung in the lo­cal crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.

His pre­de­ces­sor Faris Al-Rawi, who cur­rent­ly serves as Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter, was al­lowed to re­place him and con­tin­ues to rep­re­sent the State in lo­cal and for­eign lit­i­ga­tion con­cern­ing the mat­ter.

The fi­nal judg­ment ob­tained in the Mi­a­mi case was based on the US$32,385,988 in com­pen­sa­tion or­dered by the ju­ry, which has to be tripled as the rack­e­teer­ing charges were filed un­der the US's Rack­e­teer In­flu­enced and Cor­rupt Or­gan­i­sa­tions Act (RI­CO).

The coun­try al­so suc­cess­ful­ly sought US$38,876,972.89 in pre-judg­ment in­ter­est less US$4,631,691, which was pre­vi­ous­ly paid by the trio in set­tle­ments and resti­tu­tion.

The US case is sep­a­rate from four lo­cal crim­i­nal cas­es over the air­port project.

Pi­ar­co cas­es

In the first case, com­mon­ly re­ferred to as Pi­ar­co One, a group of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and busi­ness­peo­ple was charged with of­fences re­lat­ed to the al­leged theft of $19 mil­lion.

The group in­clud­ed busi­ness­man Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh (now de­ceased), Kuei Tung; for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Rus­sell Hug­gins; for­mer Nipdec chair­man Ed­ward Bay­ley (now de­ceased); Mar­itime Gen­er­al ex­ec­u­tives John Smith (now de­ceased), Fer­gu­son, and Bar­bara Gomes; North­ern Con­struc­tion Fi­nan­cial Di­rec­tor Am­rith Ma­haraj; and Pierre.

Some of the group and oth­er pub­lic of­fi­cials were al­so slapped with sep­a­rate charges over an al­leged broad­er con­spir­a­cy in an­oth­er case, com­mon­ly called Pi­ar­co Two.

The Pi­ar­co Three case per­tained to a £25,000 bribe al­leged­ly re­ceived by for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day (now de­ceased) and his wife Oma and al­leged­ly paid by Gal­barans­ingh and for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Car­los John as an al­leged in­duce­ment in re­la­tion to the air­port project. The Pi­ar­co Four case on­ly in­volves Pierre.

In 2019, a High Court Judge up­held a le­gal chal­lenge over the Pi­ar­co Two case af­ter for­mer se­nior mag­is­trate Ejen­ny Es­pinet re­tired with the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry al­most com­plete.

The rul­ing meant that the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry in­to the Pi­ar­co Two case had to be restart­ed afresh be­fore a new mag­is­trate along with the Pi­ar­co Three in­quiry, which was al­so be­fore Es­pinet and left in­com­plete up­on her re­tire­ment. The Pi­ar­co Four in­quiry was com­plet­ed with Pierre be­ing com­mit­ted to stand tri­al.

In June 2022, the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil up­held an ap­peal from some of the ac­cused in the Pi­ar­co 1 case over the de­ci­sion of for­mer chief mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc­Ni­colls to com­mit them to stand tri­al for the charges.

The Privy Coun­cil ruled that Mc­Ni­colls should have up­held their ap­pli­ca­tion for him to re­cuse him­self from the case as he was "hope­less­ly com­pro­mised" based on a then-pend­ing land deal with Cli­co and the in­volve­ment of for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, SC, in help­ing him re­solve it.

In March, last year, DPP Gas­pard dis­con­tin­ued the Pi­ar­co Three case against the Pan­days, Gal­barans­ingh, and John.

Gas­pard ex­plained that his de­ci­sion was based on the low prob­a­bil­i­ty of his of­fice se­cur­ing con­vic­tions in the case.

He ex­plained that sev­er­al key wit­ness­es in the case have died since the group was charged in 2006 and one main wit­ness is now el­der­ly and lives abroad.

He al­so not­ed that the ac­cused had a "fair ar­gu­ment" that they faced "pre­sumed, pre­sump­tive, and spe­cif­ic" prej­u­dice in the case.

In a sub­se­quent ra­dio in­ter­view on i95.5 FM's Morn­ing Show, Gas­pard not­ed that he planned to con­tin­ue pros­e­cut­ing the re­main­ing cas­es.

Gas­pard said: "I have made no de­ter­mi­na­tion ex­cept that we are pro­ceed­ing with the rest."

Fer­gu­son is al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Fyard Ho­sein, SC, Aadam Ho­sein, and An­nette Mam­cham.

Michael Quam­i­na, SC, Si­mon de la Bastide, SC, and Clay Hack­ett are ap­pear­ing along­side Mendes for the State.