Derek Achong

Busi­ness­man Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh says he ex­pects Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, to dis­con­tin­ue the three re­main­ing cor­rup­tion cas­es re­lat­ed to the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Gal­barans­ingh made the pre­dic­tion in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, hours af­ter Gas­pard dis­con­tin­ued the charges against him, for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, his wife Oma, and for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Car­los John in the Pi­ar­co 3 case.

Gal­barans­ingh, who is fac­ing charges in two out of the three re­main­ing Pi­ar­co cas­es, sug­gest­ed that the out­come should be the same based on sim­i­lar­i­ties in the cas­es and their shared pro­ce­dur­al his­to­ry.

Gal­barans­ingh said: “Def­i­nite­ly, that is what we ex­pect. There was nev­er any ev­i­dence of any wrong­do­ing in the air­port project. This was all con­trived and set up by John Je­re­mie.”

“This has been po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion for the last 18 years, all per­pet­u­at­ed by John Je­re­mie, the for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al, who set up the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACIB) in his of­fice,” he added, as he re­peat­ed­ly re­ferred to find­ings made by the Privy Coun­cil in a suc­cess­ful le­gal chal­lenge over the han­dling of the Pi­ar­co 1 case.

Gal­barans­ingh said the cas­es took a toll on him and his fam­i­ly, not­ing they (the cas­es) “de­stroyed” their lives.

In a text mes­sage re­sponse, John said he was al­so pleased by the out­come.

“I’m cer­tain­ly re­lieved. The sys­tem al­so re­quires a re­view, if not an over­haul,” John said.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact the Pan­days through their daugh­ter Mick­ela. While she said her par­ents would be is­su­ing a state­ment, none was re­ceived up to late yes­ter­day.