Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son

While there are calls for those found cul­pa­ble in the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (COE) re­port in­to the Paria pipeline tragedy to be charged and jailed, le­gal ex­perts say the of­fence of cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter on­ly car­ries a fine.

One of the at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the fam­i­lies, Prakash Ra­mad­har said the charge does not car­ry a cus­to­di­al sen­tence.

One of 52 rec­om­men­da­tions from the 380-page re­port pro­duced by Jerome Lynch, KC, chair­man of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the deaths of four divers on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, was that Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed be charged with cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 40 stat­ed: “We rec­om­mend to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions that on the ev­i­dence be­fore this tri­bunal, we find that there are suf­fi­cient grounds to con­clude that Paria’s neg­li­gence could be char­ac­terised as gross neg­li­gence and con­se­quent­ly crim­i­nal. We do not con­clude that the same of true of LM­CS as we are of the view that they were ef­fec­tive­ly pre­vent­ed from pur­su­ing a res­cue by Paria.”

The re­port that was laid in Par­lia­ment by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young on Fri­day has been sent to Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard, but Paria was mum on the re­port yes­ter­day.  

“Paria will not be is­su­ing a state­ment at the time,” said Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Lead Ner­is­sa Feveck.  

Ra­mad­har ex­plained that cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter could on­ly be pre­ferred against a com­pa­ny, not an in­di­vid­ual, and it does not car­ry a cus­to­di­al sen­tence.  

Ex­plain­ing that cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter car­ries a sub­stan­tial fine, Ra­mad­har said, “In re­la­tion to cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter it is against the com­pa­ny it­self and there is no jail term for any­one. It is a fine, at most, if there is a con­vic­tion.

 “It is im­por­tant, how­ev­er, that the rec­om­men­da­tion in its own way is nec­es­sary so that com­pa­nies in this coun­try will know that they can­not fla­grant­ly abuse their pow­ers and de­ny the pro­tec­tion of work­ers and ex­pect to walk away scot-free, that there can be charges against the com­pa­ny it­self. These fines can be sub­stan­tial fines. It is up to the court, of course, to de­ter­mine the cul­pa­bil­i­ty and what fine it would im­pose,” he said.

The com­mis­sion­ers al­so found that there was enough ev­i­dence for the pros­e­cu­tion of Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny’s Op­er­a­tions Man­ag­er Col­in Piper and LM­CS’s Ali Se­nior in­di­vid­u­al­ly and Paria and LM­CS as em­ploy­ers for a num­ber of of­fences un­der the OSH Act.

De­spite the com­mis­sion­ers’ rec­om­men­da­tion, how­ev­er, he said on­ly the DPP can de­cide whether to pre­fer charges. He added that the DPP might al­so re­quire fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions and in­for­ma­tion to prop­er­ly de­ter­mine whether cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter can be laid against the com­pa­ny.

 “It is al­so open to the DPP to seek any oth­er of­fence against any­one if the ev­i­dence sup­ports it to lay a charge,” he added.

The CoE, which cost $15.5 mil­lion, was launched fol­low­ing the deaths of divers Rishi Na­gas­sar, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry, and Christo­pher Boodram. The LM­CS em­ploy­ees were sucked in­to a 30-inch un­der­wa­ter pipeline while they were do­ing main­te­nance work at Berth No 6 in the Pointe-a-Pierre har­bour.

 In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Na­gas­sar’s wid­ow Vanes­sa Kussie called for those re­spon­si­ble for her hus­band’s death to be jailed. Mean­while, lone sur­vivor Christo­pher Boodram be­lieves that Paria of­fi­cials who pre­vent­ed res­cuers from try­ing to save his col­league’s lives should be fired and charged.

Cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter

The law, which came in­to ef­fect in the UK in April 2008, makes Sec­tion 1 of the Cor­po­rate Manslaugh­ter and Cor­po­rate Homi­cide Act an of­fence where a gov­ern­ment en­ti­ty or com­pa­ny is found to have caused the death of some­one through neg­li­gence.  

Ac­cord­ing to the Crown Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice, the UK’s DPP of­fice, cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter is an of­fence that was “cre­at­ed to over­come the lim­i­ta­tions of the com­mon law of­fence of gross neg­li­gence manslaugh­ter as ap­plied to com­pa­nies and oth­er in­cor­po­rat­ed bod­ies. Un­der the com­mon law, in or­der for a com­pa­ny to be guilty of the of­fence it was nec­es­sary for a se­nior in­di­vid­ual who could be said to em­body the com­pa­ny (al­so known as “the con­trol­ling mind”) to be guilty of gross neg­li­gence.”  Un­der the new law, the con­trol­ling minds, the board, of the com­pa­ny, or gov­ern­ment agency can be held crim­i­nal­ly li­able.