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FORMER prime minister Basdeo Panday, his wife Oma, former minister Carlos John and businessman Ishwar Galbaransingh are resisting any attempt by the prosecution to postpone their decades-old preliminary inquiry into bribery charges arising out of the Piarco airport expansion project.
Attorneys for the four have asked the magistrate presiding over the matter to discharge them. They are also resisting any attempt by the prosecution to have the matter further adjourned.
On Wednesday, assistant DPP George Busby sought an adjournment to get further instructions from DPP Roger Gaspard, SC, on how to proceed with the Piarco III preliminary inquiry, after Magistrate Adia Mohammed said she received authorisation to start the case afresh.
The matter has been called periodically in the Port of Spain magistrates’ court since it landed in Mohammed’s docket, and she has repeatedly made it clear she was not prepared to have it amble along.
On September 2, she is expected to rule on whether to grant the prosecution’s application for an adjournment, but the defence is pushing for a discharge of the four and have objected to any further delay.
The Pandays were charged with corruptly receiving money while John and Galbaransingh were charged with corruptly giving £25,000 to the couple.
John and Galbaransingh were accused of giving Panday the money as an inducement or reward in relation to the Piarco airport expansion project.
At Wednesday’s hearing, attorneys for the defence, Sophia Chote, SC, Rajiv Persad, and Justin Phelps, all asked that their clients be discharged after Busby sought to have the matter adjourned.
Speaking to Newsday, Galbaransingh made it emphatically clear he will be resisting any attempt the have the matter adjourned.
The Pandays and the others were charged in 2005.
A preliminary inquiry began before former senior magistrate Ejenny Espinet on May 31, 2006, and on February 12, 2008, the defendants asked that she recuse herself after they said they received information that Espinet was a trustee and treasurer of the Morris Marshall Development Foundation and thus, would be biased against them because of her alleged close connections with the People's National Movement (PNM).
Legal challenges on the basis of apparent bias were dismissed and the case continued before Espinet until she retired in 2018, leaving it part-heard.
The charges against the former prime minister were linked to wider charges against several businessmen and businesses. In all, there are four related inquiries, none of which have gone to trial.
[caption id="attachment_624109" align="alignnone" width="250"] Ishwar Galbaransingh[/caption]
On June 29, DPP Gaspard, said it wad his position that “taking Piarco I to trial would have been oppressive if not legally nettlesome while the other matters related to the airport project were in train, bearing in mind that there were common accused in both sets of matters.”
Instead, he said, “A joint trial of the allegations in Piarco No I and those arising from those other matters was desirable.”
Two days earlier, the Privy Council held that a complaint by the accused charged in Piarco I, of apparent bias against then Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls, was sufficient to strike down their committal to stand trial. Gaspard said he now has to consider the future of that case.
Gaspard also said he felt constrained to advise citizens that, “the ruling by the Judicial Committee does not pertain to other matters which fall outside of those that comprise Piarco No I.”
The ruling by the London court followed a ruling by a US judge disqualifying Attorney General Reginald Armour, SC, and the US law firm Sequor Law, from a multi-million dollar civil-asset forfeiture case linked to the same airport project, on the basis of Armour’s previous work as an attorney for one of the accused, former minister Brian Kuei Tung. The disqualification of Sequor Law is under appeal in the US.
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