DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Ja­maican-born British at­tor­ney Vin­cent Nel­son will have to wait up to half a year to learn the fate of his law­suit al­leg­ing breach­es of an in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment he en­tered in­to to im­pli­cate for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen in an al­leged le­gal fee kick­back scheme.

Ap­pel­late Judges Gillian Lucky, Maria Wil­son and Car­la Brown-An­tonie re­served their judg­ment in Nel­son’s ap­peal af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

While the pan­el de­clined to set a date for its judg­ment, Jus­tice Lucky in­formed the par­ties that the Court of Ap­peal usu­al­ly de­liv­ers its judg­ments with­in six months of an ap­peal be­ing heard.

In the ap­peal, Nel­son is claim­ing that High Court Judge Jacque­line Wil­son was wrong to re­ject his case seek­ing al­most $100 mil­lion in dam­ages.

The com­pen­sa­tion sought by Nel­son is main­ly based on his loss of earn­ings af­ter he en­tered in­to the agree­ment in 2017.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on his own be­half yes­ter­day, Nel­son claimed that dam­age to his pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion was a fore­see­able con­se­quence of his in­volve­ment as an in­for­mant be­ing made pub­lic.

He sug­gest­ed that Jus­tice Wil­son was wrong to refuse to find that the pro­fes­sion­al dam­age he suf­fered was not di­rect­ly con­nect­ed to mi­nor breach­es of the agree­ment be­tween him and for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi.

He point­ed out that the agree­ment was broad­ly draft­ed and in­tend­ed to cov­er a wide range of pos­si­ble out­comes.

“If it was with­in the scope of the in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment, then re­mote­ness does not ap­ply,” Nel­son said.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that the agree­ment had to be up­held, oth­er­wise it would un­der­mine the State’s abil­i­ty to con­vince in­form­ers and whis­tle-blow­ers to tes­ti­fy.

“No in­former would come for­ward if they have no pro­tec­tion,” Nel­son said.

Re­spond­ing to the sub­mis­sions, Tom Poole, KC, claimed that Nel­son’s pros­e­cu­tion by the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) did not con­sti­tute a breach of the agree­ment.

He stat­ed that Al-Rawi on­ly promised to rec­om­mend that Nel­son not be pros­e­cut­ed but could not guar­an­tee it.

“The agree­ment recog­nised the DPP had in­de­pen­dent con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­er, in­clud­ing to de­cide whether to pros­e­cute,” Poole said.

Poole did ad­mit that Jus­tice Wil­son was cor­rect to rule that the agree­ment was breached when for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Stu­art Young shared Nel­son’s no­tarised state­ment, im­pli­cat­ing Ram­lo­gan, Ramdeen and him­self, with the Unit­ed King­dom’s Na­tion­al Crime Agency (NCA), lead­ing to a tax eva­sion probe.

How­ev­er, Poole claimed that the breach did not di­rect­ly lead to Nel­son be­ing ex­pelled from his law cham­bers by his col­leagues or the UK Bar Stan­dards Board’s re­fusal to is­sue Nel­son with a prac­tis­ing cer­tifi­cate.

He said both de­ci­sions were based on Nel­son be­ing ini­tial­ly charged along­side Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen and plead­ing guilty.

Poole al­so claimed that the de­ci­sion by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice to pay Nel­son’s le­gal fees for the crim­i­nal charges did not mean that it ac­cept­ed li­a­bil­i­ty for Nel­son’s in­abil­i­ty to prac­tise law.

Briefly re­spond­ing to Poole, Nel­son main­tained that his in­abil­i­ty to prac­tise was based on his re­moval from his cham­bers and his dif­fi­cul­ty in find­ing a re­place­ment, as op­posed to ac­tion tak­en by the Board.

Not­ing that the Board had nev­er tak­en dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against him in the past eight years, Nel­son said: “If it has the pow­er to de­bar me, then it would have done so.”

ABOUT THE CASE

In Oc­to­ber 2017, Nel­son pro­vid­ed a state­ment in which he claimed that Ram­lo­gan had de­mand­ed that he pay him ten per cent of the le­gal fees he re­ceived for rep­re­sent­ing the State and State com­pa­nies dur­ing Ram­lo­gan’s tenure be­tween 2010 and 2015.

He claimed that at­tor­ney Ramdeen served as the in­ter­me­di­ary by al­leged­ly col­lect­ing the funds and pay­ing them over to Ram­lo­gan.

Al­most a month lat­er, Nel­son en­tered in­to an in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment with Al-Rawi.

In the doc­u­ment, Al-Rawi, as the le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Gov­ern­ment, agreed that Nel­son’s state­ment would not be re­leased in­to the pub­lic do­main, in­clud­ing through par­lia­men­tary de­bate.

While it stat­ed that the state­ment would be dis­closed to the DPP’s Of­fice and the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau (ACIB), it not­ed that it would not be dis­closed to pros­e­cut­ing, tax en­force­ment, reg­u­la­to­ry or dis­ci­pli­nary au­thor­i­ties out­side of T&T.

It al­so promised that no civ­il lit­i­ga­tion to re­coup the le­gal fees al­ready paid to him would be tak­en, and Al-Rawi agreed to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions to the DPP’s Of­fice for him not to be pros­e­cut­ed.

In 2019, Ram­lo­gan, Ramdeen and Nel­son were charged with con­spir­ing to­geth­er to re­ceive, con­ceal and trans­fer crim­i­nal prop­er­ty, name­ly the re­wards giv­en to Ram­lo­gan by Nel­son for be­ing ap­point­ed to rep­re­sent the State in sev­er­al cas­es; con­spir­ing to­geth­er to cor­rupt­ly give Ram­lo­gan a per­cent­age of the funds; and con­spir­ing with Ram­lo­gan to make him mis­be­have in pub­lic of­fice by re­ceiv­ing the funds.

Short­ly af­ter be­ing charged, Nel­son en­tered in­to a plea agree­ment with the DPP’s Of­fice in ex­change for his tes­ti­mo­ny against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen.

In March 2020, High Court Judge Mal­colm Holdip up­held the plea agree­ment and is­sued a to­tal of $2.25 mil­lion in fines to Nel­son for his role in the al­leged con­spir­a­cy.

Un­der his plea agree­ment, the con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice charge was dropped, and he was fined for the oth­er two of­fences.

He was al­so placed on a $250,000 bond to keep the peace for three years.

Nel­son then sued the State, al­leg­ing that it breached the in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment. He al­so filed a sep­a­rate case seek­ing to over­turn his con­vic­tions and sen­tences.

In Oc­to­ber 2022, DPP Roger Gas­pard, SC, was forced to dis­con­tin­ue the cor­rup­tion case against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen due to Nel­son’s un­will­ing­ness to tes­ti­fy while his law­suits were be­ing de­ter­mined.

“The State is of the view that it would be un­fair to leave the case against these de­fen­dants in lim­bo pend­ing the out­come of the civ­il claim when there is no date for its con­clu­sion,” Gas­pard said at the time.

DPP Gas­pard stat­ed that the charges may be re­filed if Nel­son’s po­si­tion changes.

In Ju­ly last year, an­oth­er pan­el of the Court of Ap­peal dis­missed Nel­son’s chal­lenge to his con­vic­tions based on his de­lay in rais­ing the is­sue.

“The Court is of the opin­ion, there­fore, that no sat­is­fac­to­ry or con­vinc­ing rea­sons have been prof­fered which jus­ti­fy the lengthy de­lay in this case,” it said.

It al­so not­ed that Nel­son had ad­e­quate le­gal coun­sel be­fore he agreed to en­ter in­to the plea agree­ment and that it was ap­proved by a High Court judge.

Nel­son is pur­su­ing a fi­nal ap­peal in that case be­fore the UK-based Privy Coun­cil.