AG slams PNM ‘brothers in law’
TRINIDAD EXPRESS – TEN people, linked by the chain of friendship or family to the PNM, raked in $84 million in legal fees during the years of the Patrick Manning administration, Attorney General Anand Ramlogan disclosed to the Senate on Wednesday.

“Amongst those 10, a former Government minister’s husband, brother, brother-in-law,” Ramlogan said. “Sister-in-law too,” added Senate leader Subhas Panday.

UDeCOTT, the AG disclosed, spent $110 million in legal fees and $72 million (or 65 per cent) went to one law firm. To add insult to injury, he said UDeCOTT spent $28 million in legal fees to defend former UDeCOTT chairman Calder Hart before the UFF Commission of Enquiry.

“After all the squandermania, the waste and corruption at UDeCOTT, they spent $28 million to defend that man. And they want me to stop these corruption probes,” Ramlogan said.

In a powerful response to allegations made by Opposition Leader Keith Rowley that he had hired his legal “friends” to investigate corruption, Ramlogan said during the “feeding frenzy” local attorneys were paid over $158 million by the Ministry of the Attorney General.

He said a total of $624 million in legal fees were paid by the State during 2002-2010.

“Monkey doh watch he own tail,” the AG quipped.

“When I looked at the Uff Commission of Enquiry… I said ‘Oh my God’… when people ask what criteria was used (by me), how you hired these people (on the A-team to investigate corruption) … I wonder where was that voice when you were in government and they were doing this. The chain of friendship that was built and well natured by the Manning administration in relation to the retention of counsel and legal firms, really reduced itself to a feeding frenzy on the nation’s coffers.”

The Ministry of Health, he noted, paid $22.5 million in legal fees just on the Scarborough Hospital project. That money could have helped complete the hospital for the people of Tobago, he said.

“Could you imagine a minister’s husband, a minister’s brother-in-law, minister’s brother, law firms with distinct identifiable political connections given the personalities that served as partners in those firms, distinct political connections and direct access to the government? They were the choice firms to get the most lucrative work,” Ramlogan thundered.
He noted that while Pennelope Beckles was not a “favoured daughter”, “I can tell you, Senator Fitzgerald Hinds and Senator Faris Al-Rawi are among them”.
“They too benefitted. One was on the panel of FCB getting work. When you go to mortgage your house, to buy anything, you have to pay for the lawyer’s signature,” he said.
“Poor lawyers who come from poor families, like myself, like Mr Panday, when you graduate from law school and you top the law faculty, there is no space for people like you and me in this country. You have to have connections; you have to have parents who frequent the cocktail circuit; you have to have a father who could play golf; and most importantly you must have a connection with the ruling party of the day,” he said.
“One set of law chambers in PoS repeatedly got all the briefs. One senior counsel and two junior counsels were repeatedly retained. They became overnight experts in criminal law, extradition, dog bite man, man bite dog, whatever you had, any kind of case.
“Law lecturers — whether from the Mona campus, St Augustine…suddenly got juicy briefs from the State. They managed to juggle a full-time lectureship while being in the court every day. What can I say?”
He added, “You see when they wish to cast aspersions on us and talk about friends and family, let me set the record clear: the Government and the Attorney General is not related in any way to any of the persons on those corruption probes. Let them take that. These are the facts!”
Ramlogan said the total legal fees paid by his ministry during the period 2001-2010 amounted to $213 million. That, he said, did not include the state enterprise sector.
“It is almost as though litigation is artificially created, manufactured and generated to sustain certain individuals, and senior longstanding members of the inner bar are bypassed in favour of a chosen few. They have no qualms in hiring their friends and family, they kept it hush-hush,” he said, recalling that when a question was asked in the Parliament about the quantum of fees to a certain attorney, the PNM said it would be an invasion of privacy.
Ramlogan said at the National Energy Corporation, out of 23 pending cases, 17 went to one law firm in San Fernando.
“And that one firm … has a senior member of the former government on his partnership board,” he said. Added Panday: “No wonder he used to treat us so in the House.”
“National Quarries … they chose the firm of Alexander Jeremie and Company. Could you imagine that, that firm is briefed to prepare draft legislation for the National Lotteries Control Board? Could you imagine … that the Ministry of Health shows that in 2010, Alexander Jeremie and Company is retained and paid handsomely for advice on consultation on the Tobacco Bill,” Ramlogan stated.
“Madam Vice President, the office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel and Solicitor General housed in the Ministry of the Attorney General routinely provides that kind of advice. But the NLCB and other state agencies retained the very law firm from which my predecessor came. I do not fault him. I know what the salary is like. I sympathise with him. I am happy that he got through. It is just that I am worried about people like Senator Beckles and other people in the legal profession.”
The total legal fees paid to foreign attorneys during the ten-year period of the Manning administration amounted to $213 million, he said.
Saying that he did not think it would be proper for him to call the names of the multi-millionaires that the PNM created, Ramlogan said: “This group of familiar names appears almost as if by note. They continue to magically appear time and again whatever the nature, complexity or subject matter. It is almost as though the rest of the legal profession suffered from some unidentified collective intellectual deficiency that they alone knew about,” he said.
On the CLICO issue, the AG said Government intended to bring an amendment to the Central Bank Act to vest responsibility for all non-criminal litigation arising out of this financial emergency in the office of the Attorney General.
Commenting afterwards, Hinds said he only got no more than $200,000 in briefs from the State. He said the AG’s comments were scandalous and he had misled the House. Al-Wari meanwhile said he never got any work from the State.