Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Fol­low­ing a High Court or­der, the State has dis­closed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly $16.3 mil­lion was paid by the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) and Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny (Paria) to at­tor­neys for their work dur­ing the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Feb­ru­ary 2022 Paria Div­ing Tragedy, which claimed four lives and left one sur­vivor.

The sole sur­vivor, Christo­pher Boodram, has since ex­pressed his “dis­gust” over the pay­ments, not­ing that the fam­i­lies of the de­ceased divers have yet to re­ceive a “red cent” in com­pen­sa­tion.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered on Oc­to­ber 14, High Court Judge Jus­tice Joan Charles or­dered for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to ful­ly dis­close the names of at­tor­neys and the amounts they were paid in con­nec­tion with the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry, con­demn­ing his re­fusal to do so as a breach of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act.

The Court ac­cept­ed the case made by ac­tivist Mar­sha Walk­er’s lawyer, Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and re­ject­ed Row­ley’s ar­gu­ment that re­veal­ing the lawyers’ iden­ti­ties could en­dan­ger them, find­ing no ev­i­dence to sup­port that claim. Jus­tice Charles ruled that Row­ley act­ed un­law­ful­ly by re­leas­ing on­ly lump-sum fig­ures and grant­ed an or­der com­pelling the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter to dis­close the full de­tails with­in sev­en days, al­so or­der­ing the State to pay Walk­er’s le­gal costs.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar chose not to ap­peal the court’s de­ci­sion and or­dered that the in­for­ma­tion be re­leased yes­ter­day evening.

In doc­u­ments sent to Guardian Me­dia from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, it was re­vealed that the OPM spent $9,871,496.66 in le­gal fees, while Paria spent $6,460,732.73.

The first hear­ing of the CoE be­gan on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2022, and con­clud­ed in Jan­u­ary 2023, with the com­mis­sion’s fi­nal re­port sub­mit­ted on No­vem­ber 30 of that same year. The OPM’s fees were paid to Com­mis­sion­ers Jerome Lynch, KC, and Gre­go­ry Wil­son, as well as Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, for se­nior le­gal coun­sel, Ron­nie Bisses­sar for ju­nior le­gal coun­sel, and Vi­jaya Ma­haraj as the in­struct­ing at­tor­ney.

Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, earned the high­est sum from the CoE, re­ceiv­ing $3,245,000 for his ser­vices. Lynch was paid $2,334,274.31, while Bisses­sar re­ceived $2,210,000.07. Wil­son earned $1.1 mil­lion, and Vi­jaya Ma­haraj was paid $982,222.28.

Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj could not be reached for com­ment. Mean­while, Paria en­list­ed the ser­vices of at­tor­neys Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Ja­son Mootoo, SC, Gre­tel Baird, Thane Pierre, and Se­bas­t­ian Pe­ter­son. How­ev­er, Paria has still not stat­ed how much each lawyer earned. Paria would on­ly list four in­voic­es to­talling $6.4 mil­lion. The fees have drawn the ire of Boodram.

In a state­ment, Boodram wrote, “I am dis­gust­ed with the lat­est dis­clo­sure of le­gal fees paid by for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to the com­mis­sion­ers and their lawyers in the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Paria div­ing tragedy. When one bears in mind the mil­lions of dol­lars in le­gal fees paid to its lawyers, it is clear that this Com­mis­sion of En­quiry was noth­ing more than a po­lit­i­cal ex­cuse for PNM lawyers to en­gage in a feed­ing fren­zy at our ex­pense.”

Boodram went as far as to de­scribe the lawyers as “le­gal vul­tures” who “swooped down to feed and picked at the corpses of my broth­ers who died in that pipeline”. Boodram lament­ed that while the lawyers were paid mil­lions, “not one red cent has been paid to the fam­i­lies”.

“Not one of those lawyers who earned these mil­lions on the backs of my de­ceased broth­ers has ever reached out to send so much as a ham­per to us. Some­times I won­der if the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry was a PNM po­lit­i­cal gim­mick be­cause none of the Lynch rec­om­men­da­tions have been im­ple­ment­ed.”

Boodram thanked Per­sad-Bisses­sar for not ap­peal­ing the judg­ment and re­leas­ing the in­for­ma­tion; how­ev­er, he had one more re­quest of her.

“My last hope is to ap­peal to the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, SC, and humbly beg her in­ter­ven­tion so that we can hope­ful­ly get some re­lief. I know that she has a kind and com­pas­sion­ate heart and gen­uine­ly be­lieves she will try her best for us.” Boodram and the af­fect­ed fam­i­lies have not re­ceived any com­pen­sa­tion so far. An of­fer of a $1 mil­lion ex gra­tia pay­ment to each of the fam­i­lies was made by for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young weeks be­fore the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion; how­ev­er, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress won at the poll.

Short­ly af­ter as­sum­ing of­fice, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the mat­ter of pay­ments to the fam­i­lies of the divers who died and the sur­viv­ing div­er may have to be set­tled through a ju­di­cial set­tle­ment.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the fam­i­lies of Fyzal Kur­ban and Yusuf Hen­ry are cur­rent­ly li­ais­ing with Paria about com­pen­sa­tion.

The Paria div­ing tragedy in Feb­ru­ary 2022 re­sult­ed in the deaths of four divers, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry, and Rishi Na­gas­sar, af­ter they were sucked in­to a sub­sea pipeline by a Delta P event.