Derek Achong

A High Court judge has giv­en a Jus­tice of the Peace (JP)—sued by busi­ness­man Adri­an Scoon for grant­i­ng a search war­rant for his prop­er­ties as part of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to whether he breached on­go­ing pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions by op­er­at­ing a par­ty boat– an op­por­tu­ni­ty to file ev­i­dence op­pos­ing the case. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that while JP Oliv­er Bood­hu was served with the le­gal pro­ceed­ings by Scoon’s le­gal team af­ter sev­er­al failed at­tempts, nei­ther Bood­hu nor any le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive for him at­tend­ed a vir­tu­al case man­age­ment hear­ing of the case be­fore Jus­tice Ricky Rahim on Mon­day. 

De­spite Bood­hu’s ab­sence, Rahim still set time­lines for him and the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment, which was al­so served and was un­rep­re­sent­ed at the hear­ing, to file ev­i­dence in op­po­si­tion. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that if one or both par­ties fail to meet the dead­lines and par­tic­i­pate in the case, it will con­tin­ue in their ab­sence. 

In the law­suit, Scoon’s lawyers are claim­ing that the war­rant is­sued by Bood­hu on De­cem­ber 29 last year, was null and void as it con­tra­dict­ed the terms of the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act.

 They are al­so con­tend­ing that the is­suance of the war­rant con­sti­tut­ed an abuse of pow­er and an im­prop­er ex­er­cise of Bood­hu’s dis­cre­tion. 

Through the law­suit, Scoon is seek­ing a de­c­la­ra­tion over Bood­hu’s de­ci­sion and an or­der quash­ing it.

 Scoon, the son of Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, came un­der scruti­ny af­ter po­lice raid­ed a “Sea­side Brunch” event on board the MV Ocean Pel­i­can on Box­ing Day for al­leged­ly breach­ing the COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions, which pro­hibits the op­er­a­tion of a par­ty boat.

Scoon de­nied any wrong­do­ing, as he claimed that the ves­sel was con­vert­ed to a safe zone un­der the reg­u­la­tions. 

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert weighed in on the is­sue, as he con­firmed that he had not au­tho­rised a spe­cial restau­rant liquor li­cense for the ves­sel or Scoon. 

Of­fi­cials of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion then wrote to Scoon’s le­gal team in­form­ing them that the two spe­cial restau­rant liquor li­cens­es re­mained null and void and would be can­celled. The li­cens­es were sub­se­quent­ly re­turned. 

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi was al­so iden­ti­fied in the is­sue as news­pa­per re­ports re­vealed that he had a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with Scoon, while he (Scoon) was be­ing ques­tioned by po­lice af­ter they stopped the event. 

Al-Rawi ad­mit­ted to hav­ing the con­ver­sa­tion but re­peat­ed­ly de­nied giv­ing Scoon le­gal ad­vice on the is­sue or seek­ing to in­flu­ence the po­lice’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) ap­plied to com­pel Scoon to dis­close his pass­words and bio­met­ric da­ta for his elec­tron­ic de­vices which were seized un­der the war­rant is­sued by Bood­hu. 

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment late last month, High Court Judge Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son de­nied the ap­pli­ca­tion un­der the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act. 

Hen­der­son said that he was of the view that the re­quest was ex­ces­sive and dis­pro­por­tion­ate in light of the fact that in­ves­ti­ga­tors were seek­ing ev­i­dence that Scoon ad­ver­tised the event on so­cial me­dia. 

“While it is with­in the dis­cre­tion of the ap­pli­cant to seek to gath­er ad­di­tion­al ad­ver­tise­ments, I see no ra­tio­nal con­nec­tion with that aim and the wide breadth of the or­ders sought,” Hen­der­son said. 

Last month, the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) gave in­ves­ti­ga­tors in­struc­tions to charge Scoon and event pro­mot­er Sha­heed Ab­dul­lah, via sum­mons, for hold­ing a pub­lic par­ty and op­er­at­ing a par­ty boat. 

Scoon, Ab­dul­lah and all the at­ten­dees of the event are al­so to be charged with gath­er­ing in a pub­lic place in ex­cess of 10 peo­ple, in con­tra­ven­tion of the reg­u­la­tions at the time. 

Scoon is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Kiel Tak­lals­ingh and Ste­fan Ramkissoon.
 

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