Senior Reporter
derek.achong@guardian.co.tt
An immigration consultant from Aranguez who was acquitted of two charges of allegedly stealing $77,000 from a client seeking help with work permits has lost her malicious prosecution lawsuit.
In a judgment delivered yesterday, High Court Judge Frank Seepersad dismissed Premabhakti Samaroo’s lawsuit against the Office of the Attorney General.
Justice Seepersad found several deficiencies in the police investigation and ruled that officers lacked reasonable and probable cause to charge Samaroo with one of the offences. However, he found that she had not met the high threshold required to prove malicious prosecution.
Contacted yesterday, Samaroo said she was considering an appeal. She maintained that she had been framed by her former clients and was the victim of a shoddy police investigation.
The criminal charges stemmed from allegations made by two former clients after one of them, Ishmael Lopes Aguiar, was detained by immigration officials in 2018 for possessing a fraudulent work permit.
Aguiar said his brother owned a construction materials business in Venezuela that had expanded to Trinidad. He admitted that his applications for a work permit had been denied several times before he approached Samaroo for help.
He said the company, Rustitiles Limited, paid Samaroo $80,000 in two instalments to assist him and Daniel Rodriguez, a Portuguese national who worked for the company as an accountant, in obtaining work permits. Aguiar said they sought a refund after delays in the application process and after he obtained a work permit on his own. Both Aguiar and Rodriguez acknowledged that Samaroo refunded them $20,000.
Samaroo was eventually charged with two counts of larceny. One charge concerned $50,000; the other concerned $27,000 allegedly paid separately by the company for a newspaper advertisement announcing a change in its directors.
The charges were eventually dismissed after problems with the prosecution, including the failure of the officer who laid the charges, PC DuBois, to attend hearings. Testifying on Monday, DuBois said he missed the hearings during the COVID-19 pandemic because of a scheduling mix-up.
In finding that DuBois lacked reasonable and probable cause in relation to the first charge, Justice Seepersad questioned how the officer had arrived at the figure of $50,000.
“Although the information available to PC DuBois justified a serious investigation into possible fraudulent conduct, the financial transactions were not properly reconciled, the significance of the partial refund was insufficiently evaluated, and the evidence did not provide an objectively reasonable foundation for concluding that the Claimant had fraudulently appropriated the particular sum of $50,000 with the requisite intention to permanently deprive,” Justice Seepersad said.
He also found that DuBois and his colleagues had not properly considered evidence Samaroo provided in her defence.
However, Justice Seepersad found that DuBois had reasonable and probable cause to lay the second charge. He noted that this finding did not mean Samaroo was guilty of the offence.
The judge rejected claims that the two men owed Samaroo money for car-rental services and that the debt was to be set off against the refund due for the advertisements.
“The alleged private arrangement concerning the vehicle did not, without more, provide an objectively persuasive explanation for the retention of funds paid by the company for a distinct purpose, particularly when the promised advertisement had not been published,” Justice Seepersad said.
On the issue of malice, Justice Seepersad said he could not infer it from DuBois and his colleagues’ conduct.
“The failure of the criminal proceedings to reach a determination of guilt does not demonstrate that the officer’s original purpose was improper,” he said.
Justice Seepersad also rejected Samaroo’s claim that she had been falsely imprisoned during the two days she spent in police custody. He found that her detention was reasonably justifiable as part of the investigation.
In his judgment, Justice Seepersad renewed calls for Parliament to consider amending the State Liability and Proceedings Act so that it would not shield errant police officers from liability for compensation when malicious prosecution is proven.
“Deliberate prosecutorial misconduct should also prompt consideration of disciplinary proceedings and, where warranted, criminal investigations,” he said.
“Public office is a trust, not a shield; where public power is deliberately converted into an instrument of oppression, accountability must follow,” Justice Seepersad said.
The Attorney General’s Office was represented by Zara Smith and Chantelle Le Gall.
