Joshua Seemu­n­gal
and Gail Alexan­der

At­tor­ney and for­mer op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen has thanked At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour for su­ing him, ex­press­ing con­fi­dence that the State will end up pay­ing him at the end of the tri­al. Ramdeen said the mon­ey that the State even­tu­al­ly pays him will be used for char­i­ty.

Ramdeen’s com­ments come af­ter the State filed a civ­il ac­tion against him and for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, for al­leged bribery, breach of fidu­cia­ry du­ty, and breach of trust. The State’s claim was elec­tron­i­cal­ly filed with the Hall of Jus­tice on Thurs­day by at­tor­ney Te­nille Ramkissoon of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour is seek­ing to re­cov­er more than £200,000 in al­leged kick­backs from Vin­cent Nel­son, KC, to the duo. In this case, the State is al­so seek­ing to re­cov­er all or part of the salaries Ram­lo­gan earned as at­tor­ney gen­er­al dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Ramdeen told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the mon­ey he be­lieved would be paid to him by the State will be giv­en back to the coun­try to whom it be­longs.

“I would like to thank him for su­ing me in this mat­ter. Like Mr Ken Gor­don a num­ber of years ago in the Pan­day defama­tion claim, I pledge to do­nate the costs that the State will be pay­ing in this mat­ter to char­i­ty, and I will be putting in place arrange­ments to host a large food dri­ve that will be fi­nanced by the monies that the State will be pay­ing at the end of this lit­i­ga­tion, so I am look­ing for­ward to an ear­ly tri­al.

“The old peo­ple say, who don’t hear does feel. I say, who don’t hear will pay. While the State is pre­pared to ex­pend more monies in seek­ing to per­se­cute me I be­lieve that any monies I re­ceive out of this lit­i­ga­tion should be giv­en back to the peo­ple of this coun­try to whom it be­longs. I will con­tin­ue to pray for those who seek to per­se­cute me,” he said.

At­tempts to con­tact Ram­lo­gan for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.

The civ­il case comes af­ter Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard dis­con­tin­ued a crim­i­nal cor­rup­tion case against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen in Oc­to­ber 2022. The case was dis­con­tin­ued be­cause state wit­ness Vin­cent Nel­son re­fused to tes­ti­fy un­til his civ­il case about an in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment with the Gov­ern­ment was re­solved.

Ram­lo­gan, Ramdeen and Nel­son were ac­cused of con­spir­ing to­geth­er to re­ceive, con­ceal and trans­fer crim­i­nal prop­er­ty—name­ly “re­wards” giv­en to Ram­lo­gan by Nel­son for the lat­ter’s ap­point­ment to han­dle state briefs, among oth­er al­le­ga­tions. Nel­son en­tered in­to a plea agree­ment with the DPP’s Of­fice in ex­change for his tes­ti­mo­ny against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen. On June 4, 2019, Nel­son was or­dered to pay $2.25 mil­lion in fines, but he wants the State to pay the fine. Nel­son filed a $96 mil­lion claim for com­pen­sa­tion for an al­leged breach of the in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment. The State filed a coun­ter­claim.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour at that time had vowed to con­sid­er all av­enues–in­clud­ing civ­il ac­tion to re­cov­er any pos­si­ble pro­ceeds of crime al­leged­ly com­mit­ted by Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen. On Thurs­day, the State’s 60-point claim in­di­cat­ed that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was em­pow­ered by sec­tion 76(2) of the Con­sti­tu­tion and sec­tion 19(1) of the State Li­a­bil­i­ty and Pro­ceed­ings Act Chap 8:02 to com­mence pro­ceed­ings on T&T’s be­half.

The doc­u­ments not­ed that from No­vem­ber 5, 2011, un­til Ram­lo­gan re­signed from of­fice on Feb­ru­ary 2, 2015, he earned a month­ly sum of $64,160 (com­pris­ing a ba­sic salary of $41,030, hous­ing al­lowance of $12,360, pro­fes­sion­al al­lowance of $4,110, sub­sis­tence al­lowance of $2,000 and trans­port al­lowance of $6,660) by rea­son be­ing at­tor­ney gen­er­al. Among its claims, the State said Ram­lo­gan was li­able to for­feit all, or part of the sums earned by him from T&T from No­vem­ber 5, 2011, and to the ex­tent al­ready paid, the State is en­ti­tled to be re­paid the same, “whether by op­er­a­tion of eq­ui­ty, or al­ter­na­tive­ly”.

A sim­i­lar for­fei­ture de­mand was made re­gard­ing Ramdeen’s earn­ings from T&T from No­vem­ber 5, 2011, due to al­leged breach­es of fidu­cia­ry and/or equiv­a­lent du­ties. It was not­ed that dur­ing Ram­lo­gan’s tenure as at­tor­ney gen­er­al, Ramdeen was re­tained and act­ed on be­half of the State, Statu­to­ry Cor­po­ra­tions and state-owned com­pa­nies on Ram­lo­gan’s in­struc­tions and/or di­rec­tions. The claim stat­ed that over the pe­ri­od from or around De­cem­ber 21, 2011, to Sep­tem­ber 25, 2014, Nel­son made ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12 bank trans­fers from his ac­counts at Natwest Bank UK and Sagi­cor Ja­maica bank ac­counts to Ramdeen’s Sco­tia­bank T&T bank ac­count. This to­talled £200,367 (ex­clud­ing bank charges) com­pris­ing sums rang­ing from a min­i­mum of £4,000 to £50,000.