AG Office’s vetting $34m in legal fee claims

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie says he en­tered of­fice meet­ing an alarm­ing num­ber of le­gal fees near $150 mil­lion, with in­voic­es con­tin­u­ing to ar­rive dai­ly. How­ev­er, he ad­mits his of­fice is still vet­ting scores of in­voic­es, as some of them are fraud­u­lent

“We’ve been at­tempt­ing to pay down on these while en­sur­ing con­ti­nu­ity in of­fice op­er­a­tions. We’ve been in­voiced in the vicin­i­ty of $34 mil­lion by at­tor­neys re­tained on my in­struc­tion. This in com­par­i­son to the fol­low­ing fees paid by the AG’s Of­fice for 2022 to 2023 ($246 mil­lion) and 2023 to 2024 (ap­prox­i­mate­ly $147 mil­lion),” Je­re­mie said dur­ing yes­ter­day’s meet­ing of Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee.

The SFC ex­am­ined Gov­ern­ment’s in­jec­tion of $2.93 bil­lion to sup­ple­ment 2026 Bud­get fund­ing for 27 di­vi­sions. This will fund ur­gent and crit­i­cal re­cur­rent and cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture to Sep­tem­ber’s end of the 2026 fis­cal year in ar­eas where in­suf­fi­cient/no al­lo­ca­tion was pro­vid­ed.

Op­po­si­tion MPs grilled min­is­ters on the ar­eas which the $2.93 bil­lion is be­ing spent, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing ar­rears in each of the 27 di­vi­sions, con­tract work­ers, new hir­ings and oth­er staffing/pay­ment is­sues.

Op­po­si­tion leader Pen­ny Beck­les asked for a list of the at­tor­neys, na­ture of mat­ters and amount con­tract­ed. Je­re­mie said the fund­ing amount he’d re­quest­ed came “nowhere close” to meet­ing the to­tal and he had a long ex­ten­sive fig­ure, some of which con­tained names of per­sons who were “ap­par­ent­ly dis­missed” by the State but re­mained on its pay­roll.

“I don’t know how that’s hap­pened. Some in­voic­es are in­voic­es of per­sons who were pub­licly dis­missed from the State’s em­ploy but re­tained in some sort of arrange­ment that al­lowed them to be paid. I have to make a de­ci­sion in re­spect of those. There are lit­er­al­ly tens of per­sons who are owed mon­ey by the State. Those in­di­vid­u­als have to be vet­ted.”

Je­re­mie said some sort of vet­ting has been done and the list of peo­ple he in­her­it­ed “is a can of worms.”

He said his al­lo­ca­tion wouldn’t cov­er even 50 per cent of the “out­stand­ings” and he couldn’t say fund­ing be­ing ob­tained will be paid to X, Y and Z, as some of those claims are fraud­u­lent and he’s work­ing through those claims that ought not to be paid.

On how much was paid by the State to de­fend claims by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, for COVID cas­es, Je­re­mie said he didn’t know who the at­tor­neys were in that mat­ter but “the spend” was $200 mil­lion-plus. He claimed per­sons were hired for as­tro­nom­i­cal sums.

“$1 bil­lion was paid to em­bark on a witch hunt in re­spect of peo­ple for po­lit­i­cal rea­sons ... bil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars were wast­ed, fat­ten­ing lawyers.”

He said there has been a con­tin­u­ing con­ver­sa­tion on whether State briefs should be a mat­ter for the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al or im­pos­ing pro­cure­ment pro­vi­sions on it.

“It’s some­thing I have in con­tem­pla­tion. I’ve start­ed a dis­cus­sion,” the AG said.

Among the 27 di­vi­sions re­ceiv­ing sup­ple­men­tal funds, the high­est is for Pub­lic Util­i­ties ($513.6 mil­lion), Health ($499.9 mil­lion), En­er­gy ($454 mil­lion) and Works ($312.9 mil­lion). The low­est pro­pos­al is for the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties Com­mis­sion ($285,700).

Some $2.8 bil­lion of the to­tal is for in­creas­es for 62,050 work­ers now get­ting high­er salaries. Fund­ing for salaries/wages/back­pay/gra­tu­ities ap­ply in al­most all 27 di­vi­sions.

While the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry’s $127.7 mil­lion in sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing in­cludes $20 mil­lion for the book grant pro­gramme, that pro­gramme is be­ing re­viewed - and there are no funds for pay­ment of nurs­es in the $499 mil­lion sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing which the Health Min­istry is re­ceiv­ing.

This was in­di­cat­ed by Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath and Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe, re­spec­tive­ly.

Dowlath con­firmed Ed­u­ca­tion’s sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing in­clud­ed $20 mil­lion for school sup­plies and award of 20,000 book grants for needy stu­dents. Each grant is val­ued at $1,000.

He said ap­pli­ca­tions would be­gin once ap­proved. But he said the sys­tem is be­ing re­viewed due to the Lap­top pro­gramme, where learn­ing re­sources were de­vel­oped in six sub­ject ar­eas.

The min­istry’s de­vel­op­ment fund­ing in­cludes $30 mil­lion for the ac­qui­si­tion of lap­tops for Form One stu­dents for the 2026/2027 aca­d­e­m­ic year.

Dowlath said the re­me­di­al school work pro­gramme now be­ing re­viewed has been stopped and dif­fer­ent mea­sures are be­ing im­ple­ment­ed. Re­me­di­a­tion has been in­te­grat­ed in­to the school day sys­tem, he said. Sup­ple­men­tary funds for Ed­u­ca­tion in­clud­ed $2.9mil­lion for pay­ment to the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion for maxi taxi school trans­porta­tion ser­vice.

On an Op­po­si­tion query as to whether the $499 mil­lion sup­ple­men­tal funds for health in­clud­ed nurs­es for pay­ment, Bo­doe said the ques­tion didn’t arise, as the funds were for trade payables and op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es.

Bo­doe said there’s no date for op­er­a­tional­is­ing the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Cen­tral block as there are is­sues—like lack of con­nec­tion for trans­port­ing pa­tients from the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency unit to the block—and Ude­cott is work­ing on that. He said he’d met is­sues and want­ed them rec­ti­fied and ful­ly func­tion­al.

SUP­PLE­MEN­TAL FOR:

Pres­i­dent – $1,000,000

Ju­di­cia­ry – $39,154,220

In­dus­tri­al Court – $685,000

Par­lia­ment – $3,228,200

Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties Ser­vice Com­mis­sion – $285,700

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly – $94,000,000

Cen­tral Ad­min­is­tra­tive Ser­vices, To­ba­go – $465,940

Per­son­nel De­part­ment – $2,518,670

Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al – $75,000,000

Ed­u­ca­tion – $127,779,300

Health – $499,978,970

Labour, Small and Mi­cro En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment – $4,969,800

Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence – $68,648,710

Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion – $21,100,000

In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion – $1,250,000

Pub­lic Util­i­ties – $513,641,000

En­er­gy – $454,000,000

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment – $188,210,313

Hous­ing – $197,364,564

Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice – $64,200,000

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs – $34,516,469

Plan­ning – $1,628,803

Works – $362,944,942

Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing – $19,800,000

Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices – $68,445,000

De­fence – $39,245,000

Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment – $43,311,250

* Fund­ing is re­quired for:

Goods and Ser­vices - $343,046,510

Cur­rent Trans­fers and Sub­si­dies - $1,921,379,338

Cur­rent Trans­fers to Statu­to­ry Boards and sim­i­lar bod­ies - $570,199,800

De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme - $92,746,203

* The SFC con­sid­ered vari­a­tion of the Bud­get Ap­pro­pri­a­tion in the sum of $737,522,918 to fund ur­gent ex­pen­di­ture to Sep­tem­ber 30.

This is to:

. Re­place fund­ing used to pay an ad­vance on the ar­rears of Salaries and Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance owed to month­ly paid of­fi­cers from De­cem­ber 2025.

. Meet cost of the Jan­u­ary 2026 in­crease in Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Scheme (NIS) con­tri­bu­tions and pro­vide pay­ment of Al­lowances/ Over­time to month­ly paid of­fi­cers.

. Meet op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es for the Na­tion­al Pro­gramme for Up­keep of Pub­lic Spaces (NPUPS), for April to Sep­tem­ber 2026 and con­tin­ued em­ploy­ee en­gage­ment.

. Fa­cil­i­tate con­tin­u­a­tion of em­ploy­ment of work­ers through the Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve Ini­tia­tive to end of fis­cal 2026.

. Re­plen­ish­es High­ways Di­vi­sion’s al­lo­ca­tion to com­plete 2026 works; han­dle ex­pen­di­ture to­wards fer­ry op­er­a­tions deficit.