UNC MP asks about legal fees in Auditor General/Finance Minister case

BARATARIA/San Juan MP Saddam Hosein has called for information on the legal fees paid to attorneys who represented the Finance Minister Colm Imbert and the Cabinet before the Privy Council in London, in a matter against Auditor General Jaiwantie Ramdass.

He made this call at a news conference in Chaguanas on November 10.

Hosein supported a recent statement by Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar that the appeal before the Privy Council was a waste of taxpayers’s money.

He said the legal fees paid to the attorneys who represented Imbert and the Cabinet should be disclosed.

The attorneys were Douglas Mendes, SC, Michael Quamina, SC, and Simon de la Bastide, SC.

Hosein repeated UNC claims about Imbert intimidating Ramdass and no light being shed on matters fundamental to this case.

On November 7, the Privy Council dismissed the appeal by Imbert and the Cabinet against the judicial permission given to Ramdass to pursue her lawsuit challenging a state-ordered probe of her approach to auditing the 2023 public accounts.

Five Privy Council law lords gave their immediate decision on Imbert’s challenge of the reversal of the premature dismissal of her lawsuit.

Two hours into submissions by Mendes, the State’s lead attorney, the law lords took a break and returned about ten minutes later with their decision, without hearing from Ramdass’ attorneys.

They said given the importance of the matter, they were prepared to state the outcome of the appeal and give reasons afterwards.

Lord Hodge said after he and his colleagues returned, “The test for arguability is low and as Mr Mendes recognised, he needed a knockout blow to show that the Court of Appeal was plainly wrong in making its decision.

“The board was not satisfied that has been shown…Leave was granted on the pleaded grounds and the question of arguability will be heard if the judicial review proceeds on the merits.

“Therefore, the Court of Appeal’s order will stand, and as I say, the board will state its reasons as soon as is practicable.”

The dispute between Ramdass and Imbert began in April, after the ministry sought to deliver amended public accounts to explain and rectify an error in which government revenue was understated to the original sum of $3.4 billion, and subsequently to $2.6 billion.

The statutory deadline to provide the accounts was January 31. Ramdass was given the first set of accounts for 2023, which was audited but not yet submitted, when the ministry told her the first accounts had been understated by $2.6 billion.

By statute, the Auditor General has to audit annually the public accounts provided by the ministry.

On April 15, the ministry sent new accounts, which had allegedly been backdated and contained a significantly higher statement of revenue.

Ramdass initially refused to accept the second set of accounts, arguing her office had completed the audit, but relented after legal action was threatened.

In her legal challenge, she claims she was bullied into accepting the second set of accounts.

Ramdass’s office audited the second set of accounts, but said her team could not reconcile the increase in revenue reported by the ministry. This was noted in the audit report submitted to Parliament on the 2023 accounts.

On May 7, the Finance Ministry announced the appointment of a team to probe the understatement of revenue for the 2023 financial year. The team, led by retired judge David Harris, was selected to look into Ramdass’s response to the second accounts, her audit report statements, and any related matters.

On May 16, Ramdass’s legal team sought permission to have the court review the appointment of this team to investigate her, arguing the move was tainted by apparent bias and breached her constitutional protections. Her laywers argued that neither Imbert nor Cabinet has the jurisdiction to probe the conduct of the Auditor General.

On June 21, Justice Westmin James refused her application. This was overturned by the Appeal Court in June and Ramdass was permitted to pursue her challenge before another judge. The investigation of Ramdass and her office was also stopped.

However, the Harris team was allowed to continue other parts of its terms of reference.

In his ruling, James held that section 116(6) of the Constitution, which insulates the Auditor General from the direction and control of any other power or authority, could not apply to investigations such as the one ordered by the Cabinet.

He also said Ramdass failed to prove bias by Imbert, as the minister and his ministry were also subject to the probe.

However, Appeal Court judges Mark Mohammed, Peter Rajkumar and James Aboud held that the threshold for granting leave in such a case was low.

“Leave will therefore be granted because as a matter of law, the low-arguability threshold has been attained,” Rajkumar ruled.

In submissions before both local courts, the minister’s lawyers claimed the reconciliation after the initial estimate revealed that the variance was in fact $2,599,278,188.72, which was attributed to Value Added Tax (VAT), individual, business levy and Green Fund Levy contributions.

They also claimed that checks in relation to the approximate $780 million difference between the initial and final estimated variances attributed it to tax-refund cheques to taxpayers issued for the 2022 financial year being cashed in the financial year 2023.

They attributed the error to the Central Bank’s switch from a manual to an electronic cheque-clearing system.

They claimed there was no backdating, saying the allegation was made because a document related to the original public accounts was inadvertently included in the revised documents.

They also contended that Ramdass acted illegally in initially refusing to accept the amended accounts.

Imbert eventually agreed to lay the original report in Parliament and did so in May.

His decision was based on the understanding that Ramdass would issue a special report clarifying her initial report, based on the amended records.

Ramdass was represented by Anand Ramlogan, SC, Kent Samlal, Natasha Bisram and Aasha Ramlal.

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