Derek Achong

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) has al­ready sought to re­vive dis­missed fraud charges against Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) deputy po­lit­i­cal leader and can­di­date for Ca­roni Cen­tral David Lee along with a busi­ness­man. The charges re­late to the use of a ve­hi­cle tax ex­emp­tion grant­ed to Lee as an MP.

On Mon­day, Act­ing Chief Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles dis­missed the con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud and mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice charges against Lee and busi­ness­man Hugh Leong Poi af­ter up­hold­ing a no-case sub­mis­sion pre­sent­ed by Lee’s le­gal team led by Wayne Sturge and Mario Mer­ritt of Regius Cham­bers.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, DPP Roger Gas­pard, SC, con­firmed that his of­fice had al­ready com­menced the process to have the case pos­si­bly re­in­stat­ed.

Gas­pard not­ed that re-lay­ing the charges against the duo was not a pos­si­bil­i­ty, based on the pro­vi­sions of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act (AJI­PA).

He point­ed to Sec­tion 24 of the leg­is­la­tion, which deals with when a mag­is­trate or High Court Mas­ter dis­charges an ac­cused per­son due to them find­ing that there is in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to sus­tain the charges.

The DPP is em­pow­ered to re­quest the notes of ev­i­dence in the case, which must be pro­vid­ed with­in 14 days.

If the DPP be­lieves the dis­charge was not war­rant­ed based on his re­view of the ev­i­dence, he may ap­ply for a bench war­rant from a judge to es­sen­tial­ly re­in­state the case and take it to tri­al.

The judge can grant the war­rant if they, like the DPP, dis­agree with their col­league’s pre­lim­i­nary de­ci­sion. If the judge agrees with their col­league, the DPP is then en­ti­tled to lodge a fi­nal chal­lenge be­fore the Court of Ap­peal.

Gas­pard said, “The cor­rect course of ac­tion is to ap­ply for the notes of ev­i­dence so as to de­cide whether we are in­clined to ap­ply to a judge for a re­view of the mag­is­trate’s de­ci­sion.

“In oth­er words, we in­tend to ap­ply for a judge’s war­rant. That is what is man­dat­ed by the act,” he added.

In Sep­tem­ber 2022, the duo was ac­cused of con­spir­ing to de­fraud the State of $1.4 mil­lion in tax rev­enue re­lat­ed to the im­por­ta­tion of a Mer­cedes Benz G63 AMG val­ued at over $2 mil­lion.

The tax­es in the case in­clude $293,094.02 in Val­ue Added Tax (VAT), $298,650 in mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax and $824,548.62 in cus­toms du­ty.

Lee was ac­cused of false­ly claim­ing that the ve­hi­cle was his to claim tax ex­emp­tions en­ti­tled to him as an MP.

The of­fences were al­leged to have oc­curred be­tween March 24 and June 8, 2019.

Lee, who was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Alex­ia Romero and Ran­dall Raphael, was re­leased on $1 mil­lion bail af­ter be­ing charged.

In their sub­mis­sions, Lee’s lawyers claimed that there was no proof of an agree­ment be­tween Lee and Leong Poi to de­fraud the State.

“It is sub­mit­ted that the State has failed to lead ev­i­dence to sat­is­fy the el­e­ments of both the of­fences of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice as well as con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud,” they said.

They point­ed out that in his de­c­la­ra­tions to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in 2019 and 2020, he ad­mit­ted that he took a $1.3 mil­lion loan from Leong Poi to pur­chase the ve­hi­cle for his per­son­al use.

“It was con­ced­ed in cross-ex­am­i­na­tion that there were no re­stric­tions on the source of fi­nanc­ing for the pur­chase of a ve­hi­cle by a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment seek­ing the en­ti­tle­ment of tax ex­emp­tions,” they said.

Not­ing that the le­gal ti­tle of the ve­hi­cle re­mained with Lee, al­though it could have been law­ful­ly trans­ferred in 2021, they al­so point­ed out that there were no le­gal re­stric­tions on who could dri­ve or keep a ve­hi­cle pur­chased us­ing the ex­emp­tion.

Lee’s lawyers re­ferred to ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed by a po­lice of­fi­cer, who claimed that she saw the ve­hi­cle parked at Leong Poi’s home in San Fer­nan­do.

“As­sum­ing the law pro­hib­it­ed the ve­hi­cle be­ing kept at the premis­es of an­oth­er (the law does not) dur­ing the pe­ri­od June 2019 to Ju­ly 2021 (a pe­ri­od of 731 days), the State, by the use of men­tal gym­nas­tics, is ask­ing that an in­fer­ence be drawn based on the sub­ject ve­hi­cle be­ing at the premis­es of Ac­cused No 2 (Leong Poi) a max­i­mum of five days dur­ing the “pro­hib­it­ed pe­ri­od” or, put an­oth­er way, be­ing in pos­ses­sion 0.68 per cent of the time,” they said.

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment on the im­pend­ing move yes­ter­day, Lee ex­pressed in­dif­fer­ence, say­ing he would leave the mat­ter to his le­gal team. 

“I have no feel­ings. I would just re­fer it to my lawyer. I’m not a lawyer,” Lee said. 

Asked if he felt this was po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion, he re­peat­ed­ly said, “I don’t want to make a com­ment about the DPP,” em­pha­sis­ing that point on at least four oc­ca­sions.