Senior Reporter
anna-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt
A team of attorneys representing high-risk inmates Earl Richards and Rajaee Ali, along with Canadian YouTuber Christopher “Christ Must List” Hughes, has accused statutory authorities of again failing to comply with mandatory reporting and accountability obligations established by Parliament.
In a letter dated Thursday and sent to the head of the Police Service Commission (PolSC), Dr Wendell Wallace, and Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard, the attorneys raised serious constitutional and statutory concerns over the apparent failure to meet mandatory reporting requirements under the Strategic Services Agency Act (SSAA) and the Interception of Communications Act.
The letter highlighted uncertainty over whether required annual reports and statutory disclosures had been properly prepared, submitted and laid before Parliament. The attorneys stressed that their concerns were not challenges to operational intelligence activities, but instead raised constitutional questions about whether safeguards enacted by Parliament had been effectively maintained.
The legal team, comprising Criston Williams, Aaron Lewis and Blaine Sobrion, wrote: “The apparent failure of those statutory safeguards to operate raises issues extending beyond the individual interests of our clients. It engages broader constitutional principles concerning legality, accountability, democratic oversight and the rule of law.”
The correspondence also examined the institutional role of Commissioner of Police (CoP) Allister Guevarro within the statutory framework governing interception powers. The attorneys argued that, based on established principles of natural justice and apparent bias, Guevarro should recuse himself from any process examining these matters.
They said this was necessary to preserve both the reality and perception of independence in any investigative or review process. The letter further invited Wallace and Gaspard to consider establishing an independent review mechanism to assess compliance with statutory obligations, determine whether reforms were required and strengthen the existing accountability framework.
The attorneys called for timely clarification and appropriate institutional action to ensure statutory accountability mechanisms were operating as intended, which they said would help reinforce public confidence in the governance of national security institutions.
They also pointed to the significant public resources allocated to the SSA since its establishment, noting that Parliament had approved substantial expenditure to support its intelligence capabilities. This included supplementary funding identified by Parliament’s Financial Scrutiny Unit amounting to $76 million for the upgrading of security software and implementation of a dedicated Data Connectivity Solution for the National Closed Circuit Television Network between October 2022 and February 2023.
“Based on the figures presently gathered from public reporting, budget documents, recurrent expenditure references, and the 2025 and 2026 estimates, the total publicly identified amount connected to the SSA from 1995 to 2026 is stated to be at least $3.07988 billion,” they wrote.
The attorneys said the lack of a consolidated, audited and publicly accessible lifetime account of SSA expenditure was not merely a technical omission, but represented an accountability failure.
