Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing To­ba­go busi­ness mag­nate Al­lan Warn­er have claimed that there is a con­cert­ed at­tempt by the po­lice to shut down his busi­ness­es. 

At­tor­ney Fari Hove Ma­sai­sai made the claim yes­ter­day as he pre­sent­ed an in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion, which is part of a con­sti­tu­tion­al law­suit brought by five of Warn­er’s com­pa­nies, his son Aluko, and a group of em­ploy­ees and busi­ness as­so­ciates against the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice and the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP). 

Warn­er is said to be a friend of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

In the sub­stan­tive case, the group is con­tend­ing that an on­go­ing po­lice probe, which re­sult­ed in the in­di­vid­u­als be­ing charged with en­gag­ing in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, was un­law­ful and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. 

Through the in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion, they are seek­ing the re­turn of heavy equip­ment, tools and com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­vices that were seized by po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing raids in De­cem­ber, last year, and in May, as well as the re­lease of a 16.67-hectare par­cel of land in Waller­field that was com­man­deered by the po­lice as part of their probe. 

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions in a vir­tu­al hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad, Ma­sai­sai said: “This is a con­cert­ed at­tempt to shut down the Warn­er busi­ness­es. He must not trade or en­joy his prop­er­ty be­cause his name is Warn­er.”

Se­nior Coun­sel Ja­son Mootoo, who is lead­ing the le­gal team for the AG’s Of­fice, and Se­nior Coun­sel Ian Ben­jamin, who is rep­re­sent­ing the DPP’s Of­fice, re­quest­ed time to of­fi­cial­ly re­spond and file ev­i­dence. 

Ben­jamin ques­tioned why his client was joined to the sub­stan­tive case but left out of the in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion. 

He claimed that his client’s in­put would be vi­tal as the in­junc­tion if grant­ed, would af­fect items that may be con­sid­ered ev­i­dence in on­go­ing crim­i­nal cas­es be­ing pros­e­cut­ed. 

“The core of the mat­ter touch­es and con­cerns the pros­e­cu­tion,” he said. 

Ben­jamin al­so sug­gest­ed that the in­junc­tion was im­prop­er­ly sought as the group had pre­vi­ous­ly ap­plied be­fore a mag­is­trate for the re­lease of the items, with the ap­pli­ca­tion still pend­ing.  

His sub­mis­sions were sup­port­ed by Mootoo, who de­scribed the move as il­log­i­cal. 

“It would be ab­surd for a pros­e­cu­tor who de­ter­mines the course of a pros­e­cu­tion to not have a say over re­lease of ev­i­dence,” Mootoo said. 

Ma­sai­sai main­tained that the AG’s Of­fice, which is rep­re­sent­ing the po­lice of­fi­cers in­volved in the probe, could han­dle the is­sue on its own. 

“The State can in­ves­ti­gate from now till 20 years down the road, but un­less they jus­ti­fy the keep­ing of our prop­er­ty it must be re­leased. It is an in­or­di­nate de­lay,” Ma­sai­sai said. 

“We have shown ar­bi­trary and high-hand­ed ac­tion by the State. They have not shown why they need­ed to seize the items,” he added. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad even­tu­al­ly agreed to al­low the DPP’s Of­fice to make the sub­mis­sions and set dead­lines for the fil­ing of ev­i­dence and sub­mis­sions. Pro­vid­ed the dead­lines are met, he is ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er his rul­ing on the in­junc­tion on Au­gust 20. 

The claimants in the case are Warns Quar­ry Com­pa­ny Ltd, Warn­er Con­struc­tion and San­i­ta­tion Ltd, In­ez In­vest­ments Ltd, Pres-T-Con 2021 Ltd, All­crete Ltd, Warn­er’s son, em­ploy­ees Robert Wil­son, Ricky Joseph, Corey Charles, Ki­mal Williams, Will­insque To­bias, and Shas­tri Mad­hoo and in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tors Rueben Mapran­gala, De­on George, Rudy Sa­hai, Aaron Nep­tune, and Ah­meed David. 

What the case is about

In their court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the group’s lawyers claimed that on De­cem­ber 2, last year, po­lice of­fi­cers went to a prop­er­ty at Ve­ga De Oropouche in San­gre Grande and seized a trash pump and two Cater­pil­lar ex­ca­va­tors.

The pump is owned by Pres-T-Con, while one of the ex­ca­va­tors is owned by Warn­er Con­struc­tion and San­i­ta­tion. The oth­er ex­ca­va­tor was leased by In­ez In­vest­ments from a third par­ty, which leased it from Massy Ma­chin­ery Ltd. 

To­bias, Sa­hai, David and Nep­tune were ar­rest­ed and charged with re­mov­ing ma­te­r­i­al from State lands with­out a li­cence. 

Their lawyers claimed that the equip­ment should not have been de­tained as such was not found to be used for il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

“The ex­ca­va­tors were mere­ly parked, and the trash pump was stored on the premis­es,” they said. 

They claimed that while they ap­plied for the re­lease of all the items be­fore a mag­is­trate, on­ly the ex­ca­va­tor owned by Massy Ma­chin­ery was re­leased in late June. 

De­scrib­ing the de­ci­sion as un­fair, their lawyers said: “Both ex­ca­va­tors were seized on the same day at the same time. There is no ba­sis to re­tain one ex­ca­va­tor and re­tain the oth­er.”

Their lawyers re­ferred to an­oth­er raid on May 2, which took place at the prop­er­ty at Agua San­ta in Waller­field, for which Pres-T-Con ob­tained a 25-year lease from a com­pa­ny in Jan­u­ary 2022. 

Pres-T-Con grant­ed per­mis­sion to Warns Quar­ry to oc­cu­py the prop­er­ty and the lat­ter was grant­ed a li­cence from the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands on May 20. 

They not­ed that on June 18, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries grant­ed Warns Quar­ry con­di­tion­al au­tho­ri­sa­tion to un­der­take min­er­al pro­cess­ing at the prop­er­ty un­til the end of next year.

Dur­ing the sec­ond raid, po­lice of­fi­cers seized oth­er heavy equip­ment and tools be­long­ing to the com­pa­nies and com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­vices be­long­ing to some of the claimants. 

Warn­er’s son Aluko, Mapran­gala, Joseph, Mad­hoo, Wil­son, Williams, George and Charles, who served as a se­cu­ri­ty guard at the fa­cil­i­ty, were ar­rest­ed and charged with pro­cess­ing min­er­als with­out a li­cence un­der the Min­er­als Act. 

The third raid oc­curred on May 6 at Pres-T-Con’s of­fices at Tumpuna Road in Ari­ma dur­ing which the of­fi­cers seized a set of doc­u­ments. 

They point­ed out that af­ter the raids, the in­for­ma­tion cer­ti­fy­ing their busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty was re­lat­ed to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher in a let­ter chal­leng­ing the probe and seizures.

Warn­er, who was sub­se­quent­ly joint­ly charged along­side his son and em­ploy­ees and grant­ed $100,000 bail but not named as a par­ty to the law­suit, learned that the probe stemmed from a re­port made by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) to the po­lice. 

Not­ing that the EMA did not con­tact the com­pa­nies to make any en­quiries be­fore do­ing so, the lawyers stat­ed that they made a re­quest un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) for in­for­ma­tion on the EMA’s pur­port­ed re­port against their clients. 

They not­ed that nei­ther Hare­wood-Christo­pher nor the EMA re­spond­ed. 

The group’s le­gal team claimed that war­rants used against their clients were im­prop­er­ly ob­tained. 

They al­so al­leged that the po­lice of­fi­cers, who ex­e­cut­ed the war­rants, made out­ra­geous state­ments in re­la­tion to them. 

They claimed that the po­lice’s ac­tions breached their clients’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to en­joy­ment of prop­er­ty and caused the com­pa­nies sig­nif­i­cant loss­es and dam­age to their cor­po­rate rep­u­ta­tions. 

In re­sponse to the law­suit and in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion, the act­ing DPP Joan Honare-Paul, SC, filed an af­fi­davit. 

In the doc­u­ment, Honare-Paul said she could not ful­ly re­spond to the al­le­ga­tions in the law­suit and in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion as the probe was still on­go­ing and at a sen­si­tive stage de­spite peo­ple al­ready be­ing charged. 

“In or­der to prop­er­ly re­spond to this ap­pli­ca­tion, I would have to com­ment on mat­ters in­volv­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, which have not yet been com­plet­ed or com­ment on ma­te­r­i­al which is not yet in the pos­ses­sion of the DPP’s Of­fice,” she said. 

How­ev­er, she point­ed out that some of the items, which the group re­quest­ed the re­lease of, may be used as ev­i­dence in the ex­ist­ing cas­es. 

She not­ed that the DPP’s Of­fice was not di­rect­ly in­volved in the probe and mere­ly gave ad­vice to in­ves­ti­ga­tors. 

The com­pa­nies and in­di­vid­u­als are al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Chelsea Ed­wards, of Hove and As­so­ciates. 

Tekiyah Jorsling and Vin­cent Jar­dine ap­peared along­side Ben­jamin for the DPP’s Of­fice, while Tama­ra Toolsie ap­peared along­side Mootoo for the AG’s Of­fice.