Retired Judge Winston Lennox McLennon Moore, who was the serving Ombudsman, passed away last Friday night.
The Ministry of the Presidency confirmed Moore’s death yesterday.
No details were given about the circumstances of his death but Stabroek News has learned that he was ill for some time and this had forced him to conduct his work from home.
A Ministry of the Presidency statement said that Justice Moore began his legal career as an attorney-at-law in 1983. In 1998, he was appointed a High Court Judge. In 2007, he served as the Judge Advocate for Guyana Defence Force and in January, 2014, he was sworn in as the Ombudsman.
President David Granger, in the statement, extended his sympathy to Moore’s widow, Vera Moore, and children, Nicole, Gary, Gavin and Kevin, as well as other family members and friends.
Minister of State Joseph Harmon, who was Moore’s former law partner and friend, remembered him as a model individual and called his death “a loss to Guyana.”
In an invited comment last evening, Harmon told Stabroek News that Moore was a very thoughtful and meticulous person, who had a passion for the law and had a great deal of public service experience, having served in the army, the former Internal Revenue Department, the Judiciary and the Ombudsman’s Office.
“He will be missed not only by the legal fraternity but the public service,” he said, while expressing his deepest sympathy to Moore’s wife and children.
Harmon said Moore was an excellent example of what public service should be. He remembered him as a punctual person, who took great pride in his manner of speech and writing.
They had known each other in excess of 20 years. Although they were both retired army members, Harmon explained that Moore had left before he joined the defence force. He said that by the time he became an attorney, Moore was already a judge. “I appeared before him and I respected his decisions and his understanding… and application of the law,” he noted.
The two were drawn closer when they became partners in the Moore, Harmon, Sobers and Gaskin law firm. The partnership ended after Moore took up the Ombudsman’s post.
Harmon recalled that at the firm all the staff respected Moore for the quality of research he did and the forceful way in which he presented arguments in court.
According to Harmon, Moore was “fearless in the way he went about his work and the judgements he gave on the bench.”
Since his appointment as Ombudsman, after the post had been vacant for a decade, Moore investigated numerous complaints made against persons in public office. Among his notable pronouncements was in the case of the firings of managers over a $69M fraud at the New Building Society (NBS).
He had concluded that the three senior NBS managers, who were fired after being implicated in the fraud, which was committed in 2006, had suffered a “grave injustice” as there was insufficient evidence to suggest that the trio was guilty, let alone to successfully prosecute them.
“I can find in the police file no evidence that would lead any fair minded person to conclude that any one of the three senior managers was guilty of fraud… The rush to the conclusion that the three top managers had orchestrated a massive fraud from the account of a depositor with their own organisation, is an area that angels would fear to tread,” Moore said in a completed 25-page report, which pointed in the direction of a high-level attempt to frame then Director Maurice Arjoon and his two colleagues.
Based on a complaint received in January, 2014 from Arjoon, Moore launched an investigation. Moore’s focus was on persons who Arjoon had implicated and the NBS Board, which had fired him six months before he was to retire. He made his findings known in November of that year.
Another high profile case that Justice Moore would have addressed as Ombudsman was that of the dismissal of University of Guyana lecturer Freddie Kissoon.
Kissoon made a complaint of wrongful dismissal against the Council of the University of Guyana. Justice Moore subsequently advised UG that based on legal advice, Kissoon was wrongly dismissed in January, 2012 and, therefore, should be compensated.
“This office has been advised that Mr. Kissoon was wrongfully dismissed, his dismissal being in breach of statute 25 of the University of Guyana Statutes which provides for notice and a hearing, as pre-conditions for dismissal,” Justice Moore said in a December 22, 2014 letter to then UG Registrar Vincent Alexander.
