-despite having own counsel
The Ministry of Legal Affairs under the APNU+AFC administration paid a sum of $99.650M in legal fees/retainer agreements to three law firms and seven external attorneys during last year.
This disclosure was made in the Auditor General’s report for the fiscal year 2019.
In the report, Auditor General (AG) Deodat Sharma said that the fees were paid although the Ministry had a Solicitor General, one Deputy Solicitor General, two Assistant Solicitors General and six State Counsel in its employ.
The report noted that a special investigation was being conducted on how the legal fees were expended. Upon completion, the findings will be provided in a separate report.
The majority of the legal fees are suspected to have been allocated for representation in the cases which were filed by the APNU+AFC coalition after the no-confidence motion was passed against it in December, 2018.
In August this year, Attorney General Anil Nandlall had announced that there would be a special audit of the spending on legal services by the former APNU+AFC government.
He had said that this would include funding for the challenge by a private citizen to the no-confidence motion that was passed against the APNU+AFC administration in December 2018.
At a press conference, Nandlall had said that invoices revealed that in at least one instance, the attorneys who appeared on behalf of a private citizen were also paid by the state.
“[Senior Counsel] Rex McKay and Neil Boston, if you recall, appeared on behalf of Compton Reid in the no-confidence case… they appeared for a private citizen and the AG’s office paid them,” Nandlall stressed in reference to his predecessor Basil Williams.
Records had also revealed that the two Senior Counsel were paid $12 million by the state.
Reid, a farmer of Errol’s Ville, Vryman’s Erven, New Amsterdam Berbice, had challenged the validity of the deciding vote by then APNU+AFC parliamentarian Charrandass Persaud on the basis of his having dual citizenship. All courts that heard the case found that while the dual citizenship made Persaud ineligible to be a parliamentarian, it did not invalidate his participation and vote in the House as protected in the Constitution.
Based on the documentation released by Nandlall, the challenge to the no-confidence motion, which was ultimately unsuccessful, appears to have cost the state in excess of $20 million dollars.
In addition to payments made to McKay and Boston, two Barbadian lawyers, Queen’s Counsel Ralph Thorne and Hal Gallop, were paid US$30,920 and US$15,556, respectively. Grenadian Queen’s Counsel Francis Alexis also earned US$25,000 for the same case.
The records also showed that local attorney Mayo Robertson had submitted invoices for more than $2.5 million for his services.
Significant payments are also due to Maxwell Edwards, who appeared on behalf of former Minister of Legal Affairs Bail Williams in some of the cases. According to Nandlall, Edwards has submitted two separate invoices for $1.8 million, one for $2 million and another for $600,000.
Nandlall further explained that he had been made aware of other concerning payments and as a result he will invite the Audit Office to conduct a forensic audit of the accounting department of the AG’s office.
One of these payments was a $1.7 million remuneration for attorney Roysdale Forde to represent former Finance Minister Winston Jordan when he filed suit against the opposition parliamentarian Juan Edghill.
