PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad– A magistrate is expected on September 2 to give a ruling to an application by the Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) George Busby, who has requested an adjournment into the re-start of a decades-old preliminary inquiry into corruption charges against former prime minister Basdeo Panday and three others, including his wife, Oma.
The charges are about the multi-million-dollar (One TT dollar=US$0.16 cents) Piarco International Airport; the attorneys representing the Panday, former minister Carlos John and businessman Ishwar Gulbransen are resisting any attempt by the prosecution to postpone the preliminary inquiry into the bribery charges.
They have also asked Magistrate Adia Mohammed during the hearing on Wednesday to discharge the matters against their clients.
The Panday’s were charged with corruptly receiving money, while John and Gulbransen were charged with corruptly giving £25,000 to the couple. John and Gulbransen were accused of giving Panday the cash as an inducement or reward for the Piarco airport expansion project.
The Panday’s and the others were charged in 2005.
During the hearing, the magistrate said she had received authorization to start the preliminary inquiry into the charges.
But Busby requested an adjournment to get further instructions from the Director of Public Prosecution, Senior Counsel, Roger Gaspard, on how to proceed with the matter.
Following the request of the lawyers representing the former government ministers and business people,
Magistrate Mohammed adjourned the case to September 2, when she is expected to rule on Busby’s application.
The case against the accused is one of four inquiries related to the development and construction of the Piarco International Airport between 1997 and 2000.
In the first case, commonly referred to as Piarco 1, several people, including the former finance minister, Brian Kuei Tung, are facing charges related to the alleged theft of TT$19 million.
But last month, the London-based Privy Council, the country’s highest court, upheld an appeal from some of the accused in the Piarco 1 case over the decision of former chief magistrate Sherman Mcnicoll to commit them to stand trial for the charges.
The Privy Council ruled that the late Mcnicoll should have upheld their application for him to recuse himself from the case, noting that his decision to commit the accused to stand trial was tainted by apparent political bias.
In a statement following the Privy Council ruling, Gaspard said he would consider the public’s interest before deciding on the future of the state’s corruption case against the former government ministers and public officials and several business people and companies.
In the Piarco 2 aspect of the case, some of the group and other public officials were also slapped with separate charges over an alleged broader conspiracy to steal US$200 million.
Foreign nationals Raul Gutierrez Jr, Ronald Birk, and Eduardo Hillman-Waller were also charged as part of that case. There were also two other minor cases, Piarco 3 and 4.
and then 
