— AG says Bar Association must not condone acts that injures the State

ATTORNEY General (AG) and Legal Affairs Minister, Basil Williams has rejected claims by the Guyana Bar Association that he launched an attack on private lawyers in recent days.
In a Stabroek News article headlined “Bar Council raps Attorney General over comments on private lawyers” on Thursday, May 24, 2018, the Bar Association said that comments reportedly made by the AG to the effect that “private lawyers who fail to hand over cases involving the State should be charged,” are unwarranted.

On Friday, while refuting the allegations levied against him, the Attorney General in a statement, said that as head of the Bar, he has and will continue to hold the Bar and its members in the highest regard. However, Minister Williams made it clear that as the country’s Chief Government Legal Advisor, he has an obligation to the President, the Government and the people of Guyana, to give the best legal representation possible.
That, however, cannot be achieved when cases, outsourced to private attorneys by the former attorney general of the last administration, are kept in the bosom of those attorneys, unknown to the new attorney general, he reasoned.

“The issue at hand is not the outsourcing of cases but the failure to inform the Attorney General’s Chambers in a timely manner of outsourced cases in the possession of attorneys,” Minister Williams explained as he cleared the air on the issue.

In the Stabroek News article, the Bar Association created a perception that the attorney general has issues with cases involving the State being outsourced to private attorneys.
“It was stressed that the reality is that lawyers at the private bar have always conducted litigation for the State in Guyana and throughout the Commonwealth, and continue to do so today. This practice is ‘entirely proper’ and is used where lawyers in private practice have such skills, experience or specialists knowledge of discrete areas of law to enable them to properly and successfully conduct litigation on behalf of the State, the association said,” the Stabroek News article read.

NO ISSUE WITH OUTSOURCING
But the attorney general made it clear that his chambers has no issue with the outsourcing of cases involving the State. It, however, has issues with private attorneys not updating the attorney general on cases they were awarded under the previous administration.
Minister Williams explained that under the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Administration, a number of cases were outsourced to private attorneys.

“Those attorneys refused to hand over the cases and the Attorney General’s Chambers only became aware of those cases after judgment was passed in large amounts e.g. the Dipcon case (2016), where a $400 million judgment was made against the Government was only told to the Attorney General three months after judgment was passed,” he further explained.

Stating that the Bar Association should not condone any behaviour that “injures” the State, the attorney general posited that any prudent lawyer would, upon a change of Government, see it fit to communicate to the Attorney General’s Chambers if they are in possession of any Government matter outsourced to them by former Attorney General Anil Nandlall.

MATTER OF COURTESY
According to Minister Williams, it is simply a matter of honesty and courtesy.
“More so, communication is important as the lack thereof has resulted in substantial loss of money to the Government and, by extension, the people of Guyana. The Attorney General’s Chambers cannot be prepared to defend cases on behalf of the Government if the Chambers is unaware of those cases. That is asking the chambers to achieve an ‘act of God’,” he emphasised.

The attorney general said retention of cases after a public announcement was made to relinquish same demonstrates an intention to injure the State.
Subsequent to the Dipcon case, the AG’s Chambers wrote nine attorneys – Roysdale Forde; Ashton Chase, SC; Bernard De Santos, SC; Manoj Naryan; Neil Boston, SC; Ralph Ramkarran, SC; Robin Stoby, SC; Sase Gunraj and Nigel Hughes – on March 1, 2016, requesting that they provide the Chambers with a list of matters and copies of the files if they were retained by the former AG. Only Ralph Ramkarran, SC; Nigel Hughes and Neil Boston, SC have responded to the letter to date.

“None of the abovementioned lawyers responded that they had Toolsie Persaud Limited-v-AG, which the court awarded a judgment of $1.7 billion dollars against the State,” Minister Williams pointed out. He also lashed out at the former attorney general. “…any leader worth their salt would appreciate a smooth transition of office,” the attorney general said while positing that Nandlall, upon leaving office, should have informed his successor of the status of all matters in the chambers and if any matters had been outsourced, who they were outsourced to. “That would have been the right thing to do. That would have been the honourable thing to do,” he said.