Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) is ex­pect­ed to hold an emer­gency meet­ing on Thurs­day to dis­cuss the on­go­ing fi­as­co sur­round­ing the col­lapse of the cor­rup­tion case in­volv­ing for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and UNC sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen, due to the re­fusal of the state’s main wit­ness, Vin­cent Nel­son, to tes­ti­fy in the case.

LATT pres­i­dent Sophia Chote SC con­firmed the meet­ing , af­ter Guardian Me­dia queried about what ac­tion the body may take in light of grow­ing pub­lic anger over the col­lapse of the case due to Nel­son’s re­fusal to tes­ti­fy in the mat­ter, pend­ing the out­come of a civ­il ac­tion he has tak­en re­gard­ing an in­dem­ni­ty deal he bro­kered with for­mer AG Faris Al-Rawi.

“The Coun­cil will be meet­ing on Thurs­day (to­day) on this mat­ter, so while I may not be able to re­spond to you by Thurs­day, you will re­ceive a re­sponse short­ly there­after. As you know, pro­to­cols es­tab­lished by Coun­cil long be­fore I be­came Pres­i­dent(sic) man­date that of­fice hold­er may on­ly speak on mat­ters such as these af­ter the in­put of and with the con­cur­rence of Coun­cil,” Chote re­spond­ed via a What­sApp mes­sage.

Chote con­firmed that the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the with­draw­al of the charges and all is­sues which mem­bers of the coun­cil may de­ter­mine to be rel­e­vant will be ad­dressed.

Sources said the body could al­so dis­cuss whether to take dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen on the ba­sis that Nel­son, a con­vict­ed fraud­ster, pro­vid­ed ac­tion­able ma­te­r­i­al that sup­ports dis­bar­ment con­sid­er­a­tion.

The State’s han­dling of the mat­ter as it per­tains to the con­tro­ver­sial in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment and oth­er is­sues sur­round­ing it will al­so be high on the agen­da.

There have been swirling ques­tions about the in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment that then-at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi sought help from Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes and Gilbert Pe­ter­son in prepar­ing. In par­tic­u­lar, the deal seemed to be very ben­e­fi­cial to Nel­son, in­clud­ing the state agree­ing to for­feit mon­ey he ben­e­fit­ed from dur­ing his al­leged in­volve­ment in a le­gal fee kick­back scheme.

One le­gal source told Guardian Me­dia: “As far as I un­der­stand, it was Nel­son’s at­tor­neys that re­quest­ed a suit­able in­dem­ni­ty to ad­dress ex­po­sure in civ­il li­a­bil­i­ty for the monies paid to him in the past for le­gal ser­vices ren­dered. He ex­press­ly ac­cept­ed that the State could not speak for the DPP. He agreed that all ma­te­r­i­al would be giv­en to the DPP and the TTPS and that he could face crim­i­nal li­a­bil­i­ty. The sit­u­a­tion is no dif­fer­ent from a plea agree­ment, ex­cept in this in­stance it’s civ­il.”

News­pa­per re­ports over the last few days have in­di­cat­ed that Al-Rawi had told po­lice about Nel­son’s lawyers re­quest­ing an in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment in state­ments he made to the TTPS.

As part of the in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment, Nel­son gave a no­tarised state­ment out­lin­ing the al­le­ga­tions of le­gal fee kick­backs in­volv­ing at­tor­neys Anand Ram­lo­gan and two oth­er King’s Coun­sel at­tor­neys in the Unit­ed King­dom.

The breach of the in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment oc­curred, ac­cord­ing to Nel­son’s UK lawyers, when Stu­art Young, who worked in the AG’s of­fice at that time, hand­ed over a copy of the no­tarised state­ment to the UK’s Na­tion­al Crime Agency (NCA), as ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed by the Sun­day Guardian last week.

Young’s ac­tions prompt­ed Nel­son to file a civ­il ac­tion against Al-Rawi and the T&T Gov­ern­ment. Young de­fend­ed his ac­tions in a Face­book post on Mon­day, stat­ing he had not breached the in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment.

“Need­less to say, it can nev­er be a breach of any prop­er le­gal agree­ment, or law, to pro­vide ev­i­dence to a le­git­i­mate law en­force­ment agency,” Young said.

Nel­son’s lawyers, BCL So­lic­i­tors, who filed the civ­il ac­tion in Feb­ru­ary of this year and amend­ed the claim in May, viewed this as a breach of the in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment by the T&T Gov­ern­ment.

The mat­ter has since been sealed by the T&T court but Nel­son is now seek­ing to have it un­sealed.

Al­most two weeks ago, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard was forced to dis­con­tin­ue pro­ceed­ings against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen, as Nel­son was not will­ing to give ev­i­dence un­til his civ­il claim was con­clud­ed.

Cur­rent AG Regi­nald Ar­mour has, how­ev­er, left the door open to re­open­ing the case once Nel­son’s civ­il mat­ter is de­cid­ed.