Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

“There are rea­son­able grounds to sus­pect crim­i­nal be­hav­iour.”

That was the com­ment from Kate McMa­hon, of the UK firm Ed­monds and Mar­shall Mc Ma­hon (EMM), as she wrote an email to in­ves­ti­ga­tors of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and its le­gal de­part­ment last Fri­day to raise her lat­est con­cerns about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Es­tate Man­age­ment and De­vel­op­ment Co Ltd (EM­BD).

In fol­low-up cor­re­spon­dence on Mon­day (Ju­ly 27), she de­nied re­cent news­pa­per re­ports that the ev­i­dence was weak and said the po­lice were “quite com­fort­able with the war­rants” they need to car­ry on with their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Mc Ma­hon in­formed the TTPS last Fri­day that her firm, which has been as­sist­ing the TTPS with the ma­jor probes, had in­ten­si­fied their com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions in “re­la­tion to the cas­es we are seek­ing to charge.” She in­di­cat­ed that there were three cas­es now be­ing ac­tive­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed (EM­BD, Life­s­port and EF­CL) and “two which are cur­rent­ly be­ing as­sessed for charge by the DPP and the third which is at an ad­vanced stage and has war­rants to be ex­e­cut­ed which will, we be­lieve, re­veal mon­ey laun­der­ing and fund­ing for the 2015 elec­tion via gov­ern­ment con­tract fees.”

Mc Ma­hon al­so point­ed out a third mat­ter has al­so been con­sid­ered.

“We wish to ex­e­cute a search soon on (name called), who is cen­tral to our in­ves­ti­ga­tion with the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACIB). This is an im­por­tant mat­ter of pub­lic pol­i­cy and we urge that, on the ev­i­dence as it stands, there are rea­son­able grounds to sus­pect crim­i­nal be­hav­iour and war­rant a search,” Mc Ma­hon said.

Mc Ma­hon not­ed that with a search war­rant un­der sec­tion 5 (1) of the In­dictable Of­fences(Pre­lim­i­nary En­quiry Act 1917), “there is a gen­er­al au­thor­i­ty grant­ed to a po­lice of­fi­cer to search spec­i­fied premis­es in ac­cor­dance with a valid­ly is­sued search war­rant un­der this sec­tion.” She said once the mag­is­trate is sat­is­fied that the place in ques­tion to search may have ev­i­dence “as to the com­mis­sion of any such of­fence,” the DPP’s per­mis­sion is not need­ed.

She said she was op­ti­mistic that “the DPP may see fit to ad­vance the cas­es we have put be­fore him.”

On Mon­day (Ju­ly 27), Mc Ma­hon al­so wrote to TTPS in­ves­ti­ga­tors about the mat­ter sur­round­ing Ed Jenk­ins QC raised in an­oth­er news­pa­per re­port. She in­di­cat­ed in her cor­re­spon­dence that “Ed Jenk­ins has ad­vised that he does not wish these search­es done as they will ap­pear po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed. We have three prob­lems here.”

How­ev­er, Mc Ma­hon ad­vised the of­fi­cers that “since there has been sig­nif­i­cant me­dia at­ten­tion on this case, I think ev­i­dence should be col­lect­ed now.”

The UK firm part­ner ad­vised that “un­less the war­rant was par­tic­u­lar­ly tricky or dif­fi­cult, that the of­fi­cers should be en­cour­aged to (a) not go to the DPP for as­sis­tance with rou­tine polic­ing and (b) if they do have con­cerns or need help, they use the TTPS le­gal de­part­ment.”

Mc Ma­hon end­ed her cor­re­spon­dence by stat­ing they were work­ing as quick­ly as pos­si­ble with Jenk­ins to get his ap­proval “but I think that it’s a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem for the TTPS to ask the DPP for ap­proval of war­rants. That is a polic­ing func­tion and it should be sped up.”

In her Fri­day cor­re­spon­dence, she al­so cleared the air on the firm’s con­tract with the TTPS.

“It was my mis­tak­en be­lief that our con­tract was on­ly un­til the end of Ju­ly... it has been ap­proved in prin­ci­pal (sic) for at least an ad­di­tion­al year and is in the lat­ter stages of con­trac­tu­al ap­proval. This po­ten­tial con­tract end­point was com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the DPP’s of­fice in the last few weeks. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, (in­cor­rect) cir­cum­stances of this con­tract ap­pear to have been dis­cussed with the me­dia.”

On Mon­day, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith and T&T Po­lice Ser­vice le­gal ad­vis­er Chris­t­ian Chan­dler al­so de­fend­ed the ev­i­dence they had so far com­piled in the Life­s­port and EM­BD probes amid re­ports they had not un­cov­ered enough to press charges con­cern­ing those cas­es. Chan­dler not­ed that the re­port which the Trinidad Ex­press based its sto­ries on was old and they had ad­vanced the case sub­stan­tial­ly since then.

On Ju­ly 19, a Sun­day Guardian re­port re­vealed that ar­rests were im­mi­nent in the $549 mil­lion crim­i­nal EM­BD case, with a promi­nent politi­cian al­leged­ly close­ly linked to the mat­ter.