JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

High Court Judge Karen Reid has re­served her judg­ment in the civ­il mat­ter aris­ing out of the ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings against for­mer min­is­ter Jack Warn­er.

Yes­ter­day’s hear­ing was ex­pect­ed to be an ad­mon­ish­ment of the State for al­low­ing the case to reach the Privy Coun­cil, even though the re­quired spe­cial­ty treaty was nev­er in place to prop­er­ly fa­cil­i­tate Warn­er’s ex­tra­di­tion. Reid had pre­vi­ous­ly found that the Privy Coun­cil was mis­led, which al­lowed the tri­al to pro­ceed.

Last week, she per­ma­nent­ly stayed the ex­tra­di­tion. Yes­ter­day’s ses­sion was in­stead aimed at ad­dress­ing whether Warn­er was en­ti­tled to costs and ex­am­in­ing the State’s han­dling of the case.

The ad­journ­ment came af­ter for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, along with for­mer heads of the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty David West, Ne­tram Kow­lessar, and Graeme Mc­Clean, as well as at­tor­neys Dou­glas Mendes SC and James Lewis KC, is­sued state­ments on their roles in the mat­ter.

Their state­ments sought to dis­tance them­selves from any ma­li­cious in­ten­tions against Warn­er. This fol­lowed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie’s Au­gust con­ces­sion that no spe­cial­ty arrange­ment ex­ist­ed. Such an arrange­ment is a sworn agree­ment that a per­son would on­ly be pros­e­cut­ed for of­fences list­ed in the ex­tra­di­tion agree­ment be­tween the US and Trinidad and To­ba­go.

When the mat­ter was called, spe­cial state at­tor­ney King’s Coun­sel Robert Strang in­formed Reid of the sub­mis­sions. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al had no ob­jec­tion, as he too wished to file re­spons­es. Reid, how­ev­er, de­clined and said she would rule on the state­ments al­ready be­fore her, in­clud­ing the most re­cent ones.

In 2022, the Privy Coun­cil ruled that Warn­er’s ex­tra­di­tion case should pro­ceed, based on the un­der­stand­ing that a spe­cial­ty arrange­ment was in place be­tween the US and T&T.

Warn­er, 81, is want­ed in the US on 29 charges of fraud, rack­e­teer­ing, and il­le­gal wire trans­fers. The of­fences are al­leged to have oc­curred in the US, T&T, and oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions be­tween 1990 and June 2011. He re­signed as FI­FA Vice Pres­i­dent af­ter be­ing sus­pend­ed by the in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball body over cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions.

At yes­ter­day’s hear­ing, Warn­er’s lead at­tor­ney, Se­nior Coun­sel Fyard Ho­sein, ar­gued that the State knew, or ought to have known, that no spe­cial­ty agree­ment was in place and de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­led five courts dur­ing the ten years Warn­er fought ex­tra­di­tion.

“So, when I said there was fraud on the last oc­ca­sion, it could com­prise any of these things: dis­hon­esty, op­er­at­ed un­der fic­ti­tious be­hav­iour, and de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing the court. Well, if that was not de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing the court, well, I don’t know what it is.”

Ho­sein said cor­re­spon­dence from as ear­ly as De­cem­ber 2015 and Jan­u­ary 2016 raised the is­sue, with as­sur­ances giv­en that the agree­ment was in place. It was on­ly in Au­gust, when Je­re­mie ad­mit­ted he could not lo­cate the agree­ment, that the mat­ter was brought to an end.

In re­sponse, Strang said the for­mer Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty heads re­lied on a gen­er­alised cer­tifi­cate, which had been used in dozens of ex­tra­di­tions over the past two decades, in­clud­ing dur­ing Je­re­mie’s first term as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

He ar­gued that the court’s rul­ing should not af­fect those ex­tra­di­tions. While the AG con­ced­ed that no spe­cial­ty agree­ment was in place, he did not ac­cept that there had been any de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to de­ceive at­tor­neys gen­er­al through­out the course of the case.

Ac­cord­ing to Strang, Je­re­mie’s po­si­tion was that past heads were wrong in as­sum­ing the gen­er­alised cer­tifi­cates, based on the treaty be­tween the two na­tions, were in­ter­change­able with the spe­cial­ty agree­ment. How­ev­er, there was no ma­li­cious in­tent.

“I sub­mit it can’t be said that the word­ing of the cer­tifi­cate it­self was cho­sen in or­der to mis­lead, and the word­ing wasn’t cho­sen to mis­lead Mr Warn­er in the present case. Be­cause the word­ing of the cer­tifi­cate was cho­sen long be­fore 2015, and as Mr West has said, it was meant to be a gen­er­al ap­pli­ca­tion of the cer­tifi­cate, that is, the prac­tice of us­ing the cer­tifi­cate in the same terms each time. So, in my sub­mis­sion, it couldn’t be said that it was in­tend­ed to mis­lead peo­ple in­to think­ing that a spe­cial arrange­ment had been made in a par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­ual case.”

Ho­sein quick­ly coun­tered, say­ing the is­sue of the spe­cial­ty agree­ment had been raised as ear­ly as 2015 and con­sis­tent­ly main­tained by the “tena­cious” de­fence team.

On the is­sue of com­pen­sa­tion, both sides agreed that Reid should rule. Strang said vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages might be pre­ma­ture at this stage, while Ho­sein sub­mit­ted that Warn­er is en­ti­tled to com­pen­sa­tion from the date of his ar­rest to the present.

Reid said she would in­form both par­ties if fur­ther sub­mis­sions on costs were re­quired.