Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein is call­ing on At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, to pub­licly dis­close the fees paid to at­tor­neys who rep­re­sent­ed the State dur­ing a re­cent hear­ing at the Privy Coun­cil in Lon­don.

The mat­ter, which was heard on No­vem­ber 7, dealt with an ap­peal brought by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and the Cab­i­net over ju­di­cial per­mis­sion giv­en to Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass to chal­lenge the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion against her.

Re­gard­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion against Ram­dass, Ho­sein ex­pressed con­cern that it could un­der­mine the in­de­pen­dence of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s of­fice.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion against Ram­dass was ini­ti­at­ed on May 7, over a pur­port­ed mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of rev­enue in na­tion­al ac­counts. Ho­sein posed the ques­tion dur­ing a UNC me­dia brief­ing on Sun­day, where he de­scribed the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­peal as a “waste of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey,” ar­gu­ing that the mat­ter should not have been brought to the Privy Coun­cil in the first place.

“This is clear­ly an is­sue of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty to the tax­pay­ers. We have an at­tor­ney gen­er­al who likes to hide and he comes to the Par­lia­ment and says, ‘Lis­ten I can’t tell you how much we paid the lawyers, but give me $145 mil­lion to spend on ex­ter­nal at­tor­neys.

“We are call­ing on the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to ac­count to the tax­pay­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go and tell us di­rect­ly how much mon­ey was spent on le­gal fees, trav­el al­lowance, per diem al­lowance and al­so ac­com­mo­da­tion.”

Re­fer­ring to at­tor­neys Dou­glas Mendes, SC, and Si­mon de la Bastide, SC, Ho­sein al­so ques­tioned why two se­nior coun­sels were hired to ap­pear for the Gov­ern­ment. Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to Ar­mour via What­sApp but did not re­ceive any re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.—Shane Su­perville