BAVI­TA GOPAULCHAN

bavi­ta.gopaulchan@guardian.co.tt

The search con­duct­ed by po­lice of Adri­an Scoon’s Mar­aval home on Wednes­day is be­ing de­scribed as an abuse of pow­er.

This is the view of Scoon’s at­tor­ney-at-law, Kiel Tack­lals­ingh, when con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia for com­ment.

Scoon and his com­pa­ny, Ocean Sweet­ness Lim­it­ed, is at the cen­tre of a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine whether his ‘Sea­side Brunch’ event held on board the MV Ocean Pel­i­can ves­sel on Box­ing Day last year, breached the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions in­clud­ing op­er­at­ing a par­ty boat and gath­er­ing in a pub­lic place.

“Our po­si­tion is that the search war­rant yes­ter­day was to­tal­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate, it was com­plete­ly un­nec­es­sary and it was an abuse of pow­er,” ac­cord­ing to Tack­lals­ingh.

Po­lice ex­e­cut­ed the search war­rant look­ing for ev­i­dence in­clud­ing the spe­cial li­cense of the Ocean Pel­i­can restau­rant and oth­er com­pa­ny records and doc­u­ments. Tack­lals­ingh said Scoon was de­tained for al­most three hours.

“There is no need to ex­e­cute a search war­rant on a cit­i­zen to ob­tain a doc­u­ment that is in the pos­ses­sion of the state. We agreed with the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms to re­turn the orig­i­nal li­cense and we would keep a copy of the li­cense be­cause the mat­ter is head­ing to court,” Tack­lals­ingh said.

The spe­cial li­cense was re­turned to the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms on De­cem­ber 31, 2021, six days af­ter po­lice swooped down on the event and tem­porar­i­ly de­tained 100 peo­ple in at­ten­dance.

“We will have the court de­ter­mine whether the li­cense is valid and that is a mat­ter of pub­lic record so why will the po­lice go and swear to an af­fi­davit, get a search war­rant, in­trude on my client’s premis­es, de­tain him in or­der to ob­tain a doc­u­ment which they could have ei­ther re­quest­ed from us and we would have pro­vid­ed it or gone to the Comp­trol­ler and ask for the li­cense,” Tack­lals­ingh stat­ed.

A spe­cial li­cense is re­quired to sell al­co­hol on a ves­sel and is is­sued pur­suant to Sec­tion 45 (C) Chap­ter 84:10 of the Liquor Li­cense Act, once ap­proval is grant­ed by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

Last Fri­day, Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert con­firmed that he had not au­tho­rized any spe­cial li­cens­es for the MV Ocean Pel­i­can and/or Adri­an Scoon. In fact, Im­bert said he queried the per­mis­si­bil­i­ty of Scoon’s re­quest on No­vem­ber 5, 2021, in the con­text of the cur­rent COVID-19 Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions. How­ev­er, the Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed that de­spite clear writ­ten in­struc­tions to the con­trary on De­cem­ber 3, 2021, the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion is­sued the li­cense with­out his ap­proval. An in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues in­to the “unau­tho­rized is­suance of the li­cense”.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Act­ing Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms, Vidyah Mar­cial. How­ev­er, Mar­cial was un­able to re­spond to our ques­tions un­less she was giv­en ap­proval by Mrs Suzette Tay­lor-Lee Chee, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Fi­nance for the in­ter­view. Up to press time, no ap­proval had been grant­ed.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob, has since con­firmed that sev­er­al cus­toms of­fi­cials have been in­ter­viewed as part of the po­lice’s probe. He ex­pects that the case would come to a close by the end of the week.

Tack­lals­ingh stat­ed that a let­ter will be sent to Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to­day seek­ing an­swers as to why such “harsh ac­tion” was tak­en against his client.