Derek Achong

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC and for­mer op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen’s cor­rup­tion case will join the queue of cas­es await­ing tri­al in the High Court soon­er than ex­pect­ed.

Dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing of the case be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle yes­ter­day, State pros­e­cu­tors in­di­cat­ed that the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) had de­cid­ed to file the in­dict­ments against both men di­rect­ly in the High Court, as op­posed to hav­ing the case go through the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry phase first.

The de­ci­sion means that the case will im­me­di­ate­ly join the cause list of crim­i­nal cas­es await­ing tri­al in the High Court in­stead of do­ing so af­ter a pro­tract­ed pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry, which could take sev­er­al months to over a year to com­plete.

Ad­dress­ing the court, pros­e­cu­tor Mauri­cia Joseph in­di­cat­ed that the DPP’s Of­fice in­tend­ed to file the in­dict­ments by Feb­ru­ary 1. She al­so said all but two wit­ness state­ments in the case had been sworn to.

Se­nior Coun­sel Pamela El­der, who is lead­ing Ram­lo­gan’s de­fence team, said her team was still await­ing the dis­clo­sure of cer­tain doc­u­ments which are re­quired to pre­pare ev­i­den­tial ob­jec­tions in the case.

Joseph said the process of ob­tain­ing the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments was still on­go­ing and they would be for­ward­ed as soon as pos­si­ble.

The case was ad­journed to Feb­ru­ary 25.

The charges against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen arose out of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­most $1 bil­lion in le­gal fees paid to pri­vate le­gal prac­ti­tion­ers who rep­re­sent­ed the state and state com­pa­nies in le­gal pro­ceed­ings dur­ing Ram­lo­gan’s tenure be­tween 2010 and 2015. The law­suits in­clud­ed sev­er­al over cor­rup­tion which al­leged­ly oc­curred un­der for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

Ram­lo­gan, Ramdeen and Ja­maica-born British Queen’s Coun­sel Vin­cent 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; of con­spir­ing to­geth­er to cor­rupt­ly give Ram­lo­gan a per­cent­age of the funds and of con­spir­ing to make Ram­lo­gan 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, 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. Holdip fined Nel­son $250,000 for al­leged­ly con­spir­ing with Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen to breach Sec­tion 3 of the Pre­ven­tion of Cor­rup­tion Act, which crim­i­nalis­es cor­rup­tion through bribery. The max­i­mum penal­ty for the of­fence is a $500,000 fine and 10 years in prison. He was fined $2 mil­lion for al­leged­ly con­spir­ing with the duo to breach Sec­tion 45 of the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act, which crim­i­nalis­es the con­ceal­ment of the pro­ceeds of crime. The max­i­mum penal­ty for the of­fence is 25 years in prison and a $25 mil­lion fine.

Un­der Nel­son’s plea agree­ment, the con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice charge was dropped. As part of his sen­tence, Holdip said that Nel­son, who had been in pro­tec­tive cus­tody dur­ing his vis­its to Trinidad and To­ba­go for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and sen­tenc­ing, was free to re­turn to the Unit­ed King­dom while he cleared the fines un­der a 10-month court-ap­proved pay­ment plan. He was al­so placed on a $250,000 bond to keep the peace for three years.