…Gov’t ties Nandlall’s tardiness to big judgements
CABINET had agreed to all out-of-court settlements regarding judgements against the state, State Minister Joseph Harmon has said.
Harmon also said that almost all of the matters where judgements were given against the State were as a result of the inept leadership of former Attorney General (AG) Anil Nandlall that caused the cases to collapse.

Speaking at his weekly post-Cabinet press briefing at the Ministry of the Presidency on Friday, Harmon lambasted Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo for saying that the government lost billions from the treasury through out of court settlement that could have been won.

“By now they would have settled cases that could potentially lead to about $85 billion of liabilities to the treasury. Already we are paying all of that,” Jagdeo told a press conference on Thursday. Jagdeo said that the several out of court settlements were in fact being used as a conduit to pay kickbacks.

However, Harmon said the issues of settlements are as a result of the previous administration inept level of defence in many of the matters which caused the courts to made determinations against the State. “All of these matters were so badly handled that even at the level of appeal it could not be reversed, the matters which we settled were matters decided by the court, and we felt that it was important to establish a regime of the rule of law which says that we respect the judgments of courts,” Harmon said.

He explained that the settlements were addressed at the level of Cabinet and approval was given for Attorney General, Basil Williams to proceed with the proposals he recommended. “Mr. Jagdeo can say whatever he wants the root cause of these problems started in the administration of the PPP (People’s Progressive Party). Mr. Nandlall, as the then AG, failed miserably to prosecute these matters on behalf of the State, it all falls back into his lap,” Harmon added.

The Minister of State said at the appropriate time he (Williams) will issue a full statement on the matters, “and we would recognise the deep hole into which the PPP has put us in this country.”

Adding that the government is doing its best to keep the country in order, Harmon said, but on a daily basis “you are faced with some ignorance or some nonsense done by the previous administration that you have to deal with now.” Further, he said most of the concessions the APNU government is faced with were given out contractually under the PPP government. “Hundreds of them, we have to literally start to reel back in.”

Only recently, the Attorney General Chambers made a public appeal to all attorneys who are currently working on or have been assigned cases through the Attorney General’s (AG) Chambers prior to May 2015, to submit in writing a list of the said cases to the Chambers before May 7.

In the notice published in the Guyana Chronicle, the AG’s Chambers had said those (attorneys) not authorised by the current AG, to represent the Chambers in outstanding matters are required to “immediately notify the Chambers of the said matters.
“You are asked to give a written report to the Honourable Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Senior Counsel Basil Williams, MP, regarding the status of each case for which you have conduct,” the notice stated.

Williams said that over the past few months, in many of the cases inherited from the PPP administration, no documentation can be sourced at his office. He added that oftentimes cases had been outsourced, but no reports were filed at the AG’s Chambers, an act he described as in contravention of norms.

In the November 2017 Dipcon Engineering Limited case against the government, where the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) dismissed an appeal by the AG of Guyana in the $446M contractual dispute, Williams told reporters that the case is one of several that were inherited from the PPP.
He stressed that no notice was given to the APNU+AFC coalition government until the period allotted under the rules of the Court of Appeal to appeal, had expired. “Further to that, there was no evidence of the file at the AG’s Chambers – it is a new AG and it wasn’t until February at the budget that I was informed by the leader of the opposition about the case.”

Back then, the AG had indicated that the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) would be asked to probe cases where attorneys recruited to act on behalf of the state, in turn represent the intended opponent.

Similarly, last month’s ruling by the High Court to have government pay over $1.7B in damages to Toolsie Persaud Limited (TPL), after losing its challenge to that company’s ownership of land at Turkeyen, East Coast Demerara (ECD), resulted in a similar claim by the AG. “The Toolsie Persaud case is just like the Dipcon case. My chambers had no knowledge of the case, there is no file in the chambers …we are surprised that we are represented by the old regime under Mr Nandlall.” The State was represented by Ashton Chase. “We are investigating it now and of course we will appeal it,” he assured, noting that his office had requested a list of cases outstanding from the chief justice and the Court of Appeal as well as certain practitioners.

Williams said it is unusual for the State to outsource a case and not have any record of same. He told the Guyana Chronicle that while he had received responses from the chief justice, the Court of Appeal and the practitioners asked, none made mention of the case. “Yes, but no case like that. We weren’t told they had the case…we have to examine now, look at it and read the records. If you had a case since 2008, weren’t you supposed to bring in the case?” Williams said too that the crime chief was asked to probe cases where attorneys recruited to act on behalf of the state, in turn represent the intended opponent.