JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

High Court Judge Joan Charles yes­ter­day gave the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) sev­en days to dis­close the names of at­tor­neys and fees paid for their ser­vices dur­ing the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Paria div­ing tragedy.

The or­der was made in favour of po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist Mar­sha Walk­er, who was de­nied the in­for­ma­tion af­ter a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion (FOI) re­quest.

In her 13-page rul­ing, Jus­tice Charles de­clared that Walk­er is en­ti­tled to know the names of the in­di­vid­u­als and amounts paid for le­gal, con­sul­tan­cy, or oth­er fees by the OPM.

She al­so ruled that fail­ure to dis­close the in­for­ma­tion is il­le­gal and a breach of Walk­er’s right of ac­cess un­der the FOI Act (FOIA).

The State was al­so or­dered to pay Walk­er’s le­gal costs. She was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al, Natasha Bis­ram, Jared Ja­groo and Aasha Ram­lal.

Walk­er was de­nied ac­cess to the in­for­ma­tion by let­ter dat­ed June 26, 2023, on the ba­sis that the in­for­ma­tion con­sti­tut­ed per­son­al da­ta un­der Sec­tion 30(1)(2) of the FOIA, fol­low­ing her re­quest filed on April 24.

In re­sponse, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary at the OPM, Mau­rice Suite, wrote to Walk­er dis­clos­ing the to­tal sums spent by the CoE but de­clined to re­veal the names of the in­di­vid­u­als or en­ti­ties to whom the funds were paid.

He al­so claimed that no doc­u­ment con­tain­ing the re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion ex­ist­ed, de­spite con­duct­ing thor­ough search­es.

In her pre-ac­tion let­ter, Walk­er’s at­tor­neys ar­gued that while the to­tal amount was dis­closed, the iden­ti­ties of the re­cip­i­ents and the spe­cif­ic amounts paid were not.

Suite fur­ther stat­ed that, due to the crime sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try and the risk of pay­ees be­ing tar­get­ed fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of their names and fees, “the OPM did not find that the per­son­al in­for­ma­tion ex­emp­tion cod­i­fied in Sec­tion 30(1) of the FOIA could be over­rid­den by the pub­lic in­ter­est in trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty pur­suant to Sec­tion 35.”

Jus­tice Charles re­ject­ed the ar­gu­ment that no doc­u­ment ex­ist­ed with the re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion, not­ing that the OPM had pro­vid­ed a break­down of fees paid to at­tor­neys with­out dis­clos­ing names or amounts.

“Mr Suite de­posed that the in­for­ma­tion col­lect­ed had to be checked against ac­count­ing ledgers to ver­i­fy the ac­cu­ra­cy of pay­ments. This da­ta was col­lat­ed from in­di­vid­ual vouch­ers, as no sin­gle doc­u­ment con­tained all the fi­nan­cial de­tails. Giv­en the ex­er­cise un­der­tak­en to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion about the sums paid to coun­sel and com­mis­sion­ers, it is ex­treme­ly un­like­ly, in my view, that the in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing fees paid to at­tor­neys was un­avail­able. I did not ac­cept this as­ser­tion by the de­fen­dant in the cir­cum­stances,” she said.

Jus­tice Charles al­so dis­missed the ar­gu­ment about safe­ty con­cerns say­ing there was no ev­i­dence to sup­port the claim and it was done in the past. She added that the ob­jec­tive of the FOIA is to pro­mote open and trans­par­ent gov­ern­ment, es­pe­cial­ly when pub­lic funds are in­volved.

“The right to ac­cess in­for­ma­tion un­der this regime is there­fore on­ly to be lim­it­ed by ex­emp­tions nec­es­sary for the pro­tec­tion of the pub­lic in­ter­est. The pub­lic in­ter­est in this mat­ter favours dis­clo­sure, as it in­volves the ex­pen­di­ture of pub­lic funds. The prac­tice of the State and pub­lic au­thor­i­ties to dis­close fees paid to at­tor­neys re­tained by them over the years has not led to any at­tacks on these in­di­vid­u­als by crim­i­nal el­e­ments. Im­por­tant­ly, the de­fen­dant failed to ad­duce any ev­i­dence to sup­port this claim.”

The State was rep­re­sent­ed by Se­nior Coun­sel Rus­sell Mar­tineau, Ami­rah Ra­haman, Raquel Le Blanc, Brent James, and Fazana Ali.

The fi­nal cost of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Paria div­ing tragedy was $15,689,000, with com­mis­sion­ers Jerome Lynch KC and Gre­go­ry Wil­son, along with the le­gal team, re­ceiv­ing $10,790,000.

On Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, Land and Ma­rine Con­tract­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (LM­CS) divers Christo­pher Boodram, Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Na­gas­sar, Yusuf Hen­ry, and Kaz­im Ali Jr were sucked in­to a 30-inch-di­am­e­ter pipeline while per­form­ing main­te­nance work at Paria’s fa­cil­i­ty. Boodram man­aged to reach the en­trance of the pipeline and was res­cued. The bod­ies of three divers were re­cov­ered on Feb­ru­ary 28, while Na­gas­sar’s was re­cov­ered the fol­low­ing day.

The Com­mis­sion of En­quiry was ap­point­ed on April 22, 2022, with pub­lic hear­ings be­gin­ning on Sep­tem­ber 7 that year. It con­clud­ed on De­cem­ber 13, 2023.