JOSHUA SEEMU­N­GAL

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

The le­gal bat­tle be­tween for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass—de­scribed as a “com­mu­ni­ca­tion is­sue” by his suc­ces­sor, Sen­a­tor Vish­nu Dhan­paul—is set to cost the State more than $2 mil­lion.

The months-long le­gal dis­pute cre­at­ed ten­sions over the in­de­pen­dence of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Of­fice in mon­i­tor­ing the op­er­a­tions of the then ad­min­is­tra­tion. At a press con­fer­ence last week, where he ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s spend­ing prac­tices, Dhan­paul was asked about the pru­dence of the le­gal ex­pen­di­ture.

“I will re­serve judg­ment on that—first­ly, be­cause I wasn’t around, and sec­ond­ly, it should not have been that way in the first place. From where I saw it, on the out­side, it was a com­mu­ni­ca­tion is­sue that could have been han­dled much bet­ter… be­tween both sides,” he said.

A Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest (FOIA) ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia re­vealed that the mat­ter has al­ready cost tax­pay­ers more than $2 mil­lion in le­gal fees, cov­ered joint­ly by the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs (AGLA).

Ac­cord­ing to the FOIA, the Fi­nance Min­istry has been in­voiced $1,685,921.73 but has on­ly paid $1,059,607.48 to date. The min­istry has not yet re­ceived any in­voice from Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes for work done be­fore the Privy Coun­cil.

The list of at­tor­neys re­tained in­cludes Mendes SC, Si­mon de la Bastide, Jerome Ra­j­coomar, and the firm MG Daly & Part­ners.

Dou­glas Mendes, SC: $648,000 for ser­vices at the pre-ac­tion, High Court, and Court of Ap­peal lev­els

Si­mon de la Bastide: $491,460.02 for ser­vices at all lev­els, in­clud­ing the Privy Coun­cil

Jerome Ra­j­coomar: $217,541.73 across all four le­gal stages

MG Daly & As­so­ciates: $328,919.28 for ser­vices up to the Court of Ap­peal

The Fi­nance Min­istry was not the on­ly state en­ti­ty to in­cur le­gal costs.

An­oth­er FOIA doc­u­ment ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia shows that the AGLA was in­voiced $816,156 by Mendes SC be­tween Au­gust 2024 and Jan­u­ary 2025. Two cheques, to­talling $422,281, were not in­clud­ed in the Fi­nance Min­istry’s records but ap­peared in the AGLA’s.

The State al­so cov­ered ho­tel and air­fare ex­pens­es for Mendes val­ued at $55,656. FOIA re­quests for pay­ments to oth­er at­tor­neys hired by the AGLA are still pend­ing.

How­ev­er, the fi­nal cost of the le­gal saga could climb high­er.

Free­dom Law, led by for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, is seek­ing pay­ment for its rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Ram­dass.

“We haven’t been paid. We don’t have the in­for­ma­tion as yet,” Free­dom at­tor­ney Aasha Ram­lal told Guardian Me­dia.

Free­dom Law has tak­en the Fi­nance Min­istry to court to com­pel pay­ment of Ram­dass’s undis­closed le­gal fees.

Un­der her agree­ment to with­draw a ju­di­cial re­view claim, Ram­dass was as­sured that the State would cov­er her costs.

The tim­ing of the mount­ing le­gal bills con­trasts sharply with the fis­cal cau­tion ex­pressed by Im­bert him­self. Dur­ing his mid-year bud­get re­view in June 2024—two months af­ter the dis­pute be­came pub­lic—Im­bert had con­firmed a $3 bil­lion rev­enue short­fall due to falling en­er­gy prices.

“For the next year or two, we’re go­ing to have to be quite care­ful about how we man­age our ex­pen­di­ture,” Im­bert said then. “We now project a low­er fig­ure for rev­enue be­cause of the de­crease in nat­ur­al gas prices, which af­fects roy­al­ties.”

At­tempts to reach Im­bert for com­ment on the le­gal fees were un­suc­cess­ful. Calls to his phone went to voice­mail and text mes­sages were not re­turned.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les al­so did not re­spond to ques­tions about whether she con­sid­ered Im­bert’s de­ci­sion to pur­sue the mat­ter fi­nan­cial­ly pru­dent.

At­tor­neys for the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al ad­vised Guardian Me­dia that Ram­dass could not com­ment on the is­sue.