Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Sen­ate will to­day be pre­sent­ed with the fi­nal re­port of the probe in­to the dis­ap­pear­ance of a file re­lat­ed to the ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case filed by men who were award­ed $20 mil­lion af­ter the State failed to de­fend the mat­ter.

The re­port will be laid by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour when the Sen­ate re­sumes fol­low­ing the Christ­mas re­cess.

In Feb­ru­ary 2023, Ar­mour ap­point­ed re­tired Jus­tices Stan­ley John and Rol­ston Nel­son to probe the mat­ter con­cern­ing the State’s fail­ure to file a de­fence in the ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion law­suit filed by nine men who were ac­quit­ted of the 2006 kid­nap­ping and mur­der of Xtra Foods CEO Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man.

The group’s le­gal team head­ed by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, had ob­tained a de­fault judg­ment against the State in 2021.

This was fol­lowed by the court’s as­sess­ment of dam­ages award­ing the $20m in Jan­u­ary 2023.

The de­ci­sion was chal­lenged by the State and stayed by the courts in De­cem­ber 2023. How­ev­er, the group’s le­gal team filed an ur­gent ap­peal seek­ing to over­turn that.

The is­sue gained na­tion­al at­ten­tion in ear­ly 2023 due to the State’s fail­ure to file a de­fence in the mat­ter which Ar­mour blamed on the “miss­ing file.”

The file was de­liv­ered in May 2020 to the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s of­fice - a sub­di­vi­sion of the AG’s of­fice - and an of­fi­cer of that de­part­ment had signed for ac­cept­ing it. The record showed that on June 22, 2020, a file was opened for the mat­ter and was sent to the then So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al (Car­ol Her­nan­dez) for as­sign­ment. There­after the file dis­ap­peared.

But soon af­ter re­tired Jus­tices John and Nel­son were ap­point­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2023 to ad­vise the State on the way for­ward, the file reap­peared and was hand­ed over to act­ing So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al Kar­leen Seenath.

The probe was to en­quire in­to the facts and cir­cum­stances re­lat­ing to the case com­menc­ing from June 22, 2020 when ser­vice of the claim form and state­ment of case were ef­fect­ed, in­clud­ing the court’s Jan­u­ary 2023 de­ci­sion. Al­so to be con­sid­ered was the han­dover of the file to the Act­ing So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al on Feb­ru­ary 6, 2023.

The team was al­so to probe the file’s dis­ap­pear­ance - re­gard­ing which the AG had said there was some­thing sin­is­ter - and its reap­pear­ance.

John and re­tired ACP Pamela Schuller-Hinds de­liv­ered an 18-page in­ter­im re­port in April 2023. The fi­nal re­port was ex­pect­ed to ad­dress items in­clud­ing pro­ce­dures at the min­istry con­cern­ing man­age­ment and con­duct of civ­il lit­i­ga­tion in­volv­ing the State and rec­om­men­da­tions to im­prove this.

The sub­se­quent 60-page re­port - ac­cord­ing to John’s state­ment in the Guardian - was “cen­tred around the com­plete re­struc­tur­ing” of the Min­istry’s Civ­il Law de­part­ment and dig­i­tal­is­ing most of the work.

The full re­port was not pub­lished.

The Sen­ate is al­so ex­pect­ed to de­bate the changes to the Coat of Arms which was passed in the House last week.