At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, will have to wait a while longer to learn the fate of the State’s ap­peal over a de­ci­sion by a Unit­ed States (US) court to dis­qual­i­fy him from rep­re­sent­ing this coun­try in a mul­ti-mil­lion civ­il as­set for­fei­ture case re­lat­ed to al­leged fraud in the con­struc­tion of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. 

In a de­ci­sion de­liv­ered on Thurs­day, the Flori­da Third Dis­trict Court of Ap­peal re­port­ed­ly dis­missed this coun­try’s mo­tion to ex­pe­dite the ap­peal over the is­sue. 

In the ap­peal, the State is chal­leng­ing a de­ci­sion of Mi­a­mi-Dade Cir­cuit Court Judge Reem­ber­to Di­az, in which Ar­mour and Se­quor Law, the US law firm which was rep­re­sent­ing this coun­try’s in­ter­est in the case, were dis­qual­i­fied from con­tin­ued par­tic­i­pa­tion in the case. 

The judge’s de­ci­sion was re­port­ed­ly based on Ar­mour al­leged­ly down­play­ing his role in pre­vi­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ing for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung in sep­a­rate T&T crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings over the project. 

How­ev­er, the judge re­fused Kuei Tung’s oth­er ap­pli­ca­tion to strike out the en­tire law­suit. 

The for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al and cur­rent Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi was ap­point­ed as the sub­sti­tute client rep­re­sen­ta­tive for this coun­try in the case, which is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing in Sep­tem­ber. 

In a full-page news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment ear­li­er this week, Ar­mour sought to cau­tious­ly ad­dress the is­sue, as he de­nied that he mis­led the US Court when he ini­tial­ly claimed that he on­ly played a mi­nor role in rep­re­sent­ing Kuei Tung which was lim­it­ed to re­search and note-tak­ing. 

Ar­mour claimed that his ini­tial af­fi­davit to the court was pre­pared whilst he was abroad in Eu­rope on va­ca­tion and he did not have ac­cess to his of­fice records to ful­ly re­call the ex­tent of his in­volve­ment in the case over 14 years ago. 

He al­so claimed that he was not al­lowed to rec­ti­fy the er­ror when he had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ver­i­fy his records short­ly af­ter. 

Ar­mour has re­fused to com­ment on the is­sue be­yond the ad­ver­tise­ment, as the ap­peal is still pend­ing. 

“I would say on­ly this—I do not in­tend to give any­one an­oth­er Sec­tion 34 op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­rail the tri­als that are tak­ing place in Mi­a­mi for an­oth­er 10 years,” Ar­mour said when pressed dur­ing a news con­fer­ence on Wednes­day.

“I have said as much as I am pre­pared to say. I have said and I am not go­ing to re­peat be­yond those things that are al­ready stat­ed by me, that there are im­pend­ing ju­di­cial pro­ceed­ings. I do not in­tend, be­yond what I have said in very re­strict­ed terms, to make any com­ment on any­thing that has the po­ten­tial to im­pact on the pro­ce­dures that are tak­ing place in Mi­a­mi,” he added. 

Fol­low­ing re­ports of the judge’s de­ci­sion in the case, Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on Ar­mour to re­sign or for his ap­point­ment to be re­voked. 

A group of over 40 mem­bers of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion have al­so sub­mit­ted a pe­ti­tion for the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s mem­ber­ship to con­sid­er and vote on a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in Ar­mour. 

A date is yet to be set for the hear­ing of the ap­peal.