Make legal services part of procurement law
Trinidad and Tobago
In a disclosure during T&T’s 2025 Mid-Year Budget Review last Wednesday, Attorney General John Jeremie revealed a $200 million “black hole” in legal fees within his ministry—a revelation that has ignited concerns over fiscal discipline, procurement practices and the broader culture of accountability in public finance.
Jeremie alleged that a significant portion of these fees were paid to individuals closely associated with the former prime minister, including golfing partners, before the last general election.
He emphasised that many of these payments were made without clear evidence of value received, and he has since halted the acceptance of new invoices.
With taxpayers now footing the bill, the issue raises questions about transparency and whether the public is receiving value for money.
Stakeholders including former head of Trinidad and Tobago’s Office of Procurement Regulation (OPR), Moonilal Lalchan told the Business Guardian that people may start to question whether their taxes are being put to good use, noting that this could also erode trust in public institutions.
“…It lends to no accountability, I would say, in a nutshell…No accountability could also mean corruption… It could lead to a lot of practices that are not acceptable in terms of best practice and so on, which by virtue of the looseness of the situation could lead to corruption or collusion, more or less,” Lalchan said.
He pointed to the fact that Section 7 of the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act, excluded legal services meaning it is not under full scrutiny, among other services.
Stating that the the matter of the “black hole” was brought to the fore by the Attorney General, Lalchan said the AG should therefore, if he is concerned, deal with it with a level of alacrity.
Meanwhile, Afra Raymond, former president of the Joint Consultative Council for the Construction Industry (JCC), said he is not at all inspired by the disclosure of “this or that legal fee etc,” as he emphasised that what is need is a clear position from the UNC on the repeal of those “damaging” exemptions from the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act (PPDPPA).
He said these must now be repealed so that the public interest could be well-served by independent oversight by the OPR, as intended when the People’s Partnership (PP), of which the current ruling United National Congress was part, passed the parent legislation – Act No 1 of 2015.
If the UNC means to do better, it has to do differently, Raymond added.
“I am referring to the fact that on Friday December 4, 2020 our Parliament passed the third set of amendments to the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act (The Act). These changes were a serious blow to the long-term campaign for proper control over transactions in public money and are extremely detrimental to the public interest.
“Legal and accounting/auditing services are essential to govern transactions in public money as required by the Act, so how does one justify excluding those from OPR oversight?,” Raymond said.
He further explained that the removal of legal, accounting/auditing, medical fees and financial services from OPR oversight was risible when one considers the strong and repeated statements as to concerns over the alleged legal fees scandals.
Raymond also noted that in the “bad-old-days” of the previous PNM administration then Attorney General (AG), Faris Al Rawi, was “making a meal of the serious allegations of massive legal fees fraud against former PP AG Ananad Ramlogan SC and Gerald Ramdeen – the sum allegedly mis-appropriated was in the $1.0 billion region…at the very same time, the then Finance Minister, Colm Imbert, was exempting expenditure on legal fees from the oversight of the Office of Procurement Regulation (OPR). Literally incredible, but that is what really happened in this country.”
Image: succo (Pixabay)