DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Busi­ness­man Michael St John is ex­pect­ed to learn the fate of his law­suit, over a T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) data­base con­tain­ing false in­for­ma­tion of him be­ing con­vict­ed of drug traf­fick­ing in the Unit­ed States (US) and sub­se­quent­ly de­port­ed, on Oc­to­ber 1.

High Court Judge Na­dia Kan­ga­loo re­served her judg­ment for that date as she gave case man­age­ment di­rec­tions dur­ing a hear­ing of St John’s case against the Of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, yes­ter­day.

In the law­suit, St John’s lawyers, led by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, and Om Lal­la, are con­tend­ing that the TTPS failed in its du­ty to cor­rect the in­ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion in its Versedex data­base as re­quired un­der Sec­tion 36(1) of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA).

The leg­is­la­tion re­quires a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty to make cor­rec­tions in the per­son­al in­for­ma­tion it keeps in re­la­tion to an in­di­vid­ual af­ter he/she in­forms it of the er­ror.

Ac­cord­ing to his court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, St John, who owns Tow­er Pro­mo­tion Com­pa­ny and D’Di­al Fit­ness had sus­pi­cions over er­rors in the data­base af­ter he was de­nied a US green card in 2017 and was told it was be­cause of “cer­tain in­for­ma­tion against him”.

St John in­ves­ti­gat­ed and man­aged to se­cure a se­ries of screen­shots from the data­base, which wrong­ly claimed that he was de­port­ed from the US in 2002 for at­tempt­ing to en­ter that coun­try with a forged pass­port.

It al­so al­leged he was again de­port­ed in 2022 af­ter be­ing con­vict­ed of co­caine traf­fick­ing in New York.

It al­so claimed that he was charged with false/un­law­ful im­pris­on­ment but the charge was sub­se­quent­ly dis­con­tin­ued.

St John claimed that all the records in re­la­tion to him were false.

St John in­formed the TTPS of the is­sue but was forced to file the law­suit af­ter the er­rors were not rec­ti­fied.

Through the law­suit, St John is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over the han­dling of his re­quest and an or­der com­pelling the cor­rec­tions. He is not seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion.

In Jan­u­ary, last year, St John was at­tacked by a gun­man af­ter leav­ing his gym at Long Cir­cu­lar Mall in St James. He was shot in the face.

Footage of the af­ter­math of the shoot­ing, which showed St John sit­ting on the ground while bleed­ing heav­i­ly from his wound, was shared on so­cial me­dia.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s hear­ing, lawyers for the com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice said they would ap­proach the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to pro­vide rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the case.

St John was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Aaron Morales and Nicholas Sant.