Devant files injunction to secure Darryl Smith report

Devant Maharaj

De­vant Ma­haraj has filed an in­junc­tion to re­strain At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi from taking any action to destroy the Dar­ryl Smith re­port which has been deemed unusable by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and the AG.

This also af­ter Smith’s Attorney Annabelle Sooklal de­mand­ed that all copies of the re­port in­to the pay­ment of $150,000 to his for­mer per­son­al as­sis­tant af­ter she was fired and al­leged sex­u­al ha­rass­ment by not released to the public and destroyed.

In a let­ter to Al-Rawi on Fri­day, Smith’s at­tor­ney Annabelle Sook­lal al­so ac­cused the Prime Minister of giv­ing the me­dia mis­lead­ing in­for­ma­tion and try­ing to di­min­ish Smith’s claim of a breach of nat­ur­al jus­tice.

Mr. Ma­haraj re­spond­ed in a let­ter to from his Attorney Che Din­di­al part of which reads as follows:

“In the cir­cum­stances, we have been in­struct­ed to make an ap­pli­ca­tion for an im­me­di­ate in­junc­tion from the High Court to re­strain the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Prime Min­is­ter from de­stroy­ing copies of the said re­port and for a copy to be im­me­di­ate­ly de­posit­ed with the court pend­ing the hear­ing and de­ter­mi­na­tion of our client’s case.

It went on to state: “We send this let­ter to fore­warn you of this ap­pli­ca­tion and to in­quire whether you would be pre­pared to give an un­der­tak­ing not to take any steps to de­stroy the said re­port un­til the court can com­plete its ad­ju­di­ca­tion to de­ter­mine whether it should or­der the gov­ern­ment to dis­close same. Nat­u­ral­ly, if the re­port is de­stroyed be­fore the court can give its de­ci­sion, this will prej­u­dice and com­pro­mise the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice and un­der­mine the in­tegri­ty of the court,” the let­ter stat­ed. We, there­fore, ask that you in­di­cate your po­si­tion with­in 24 hours as a mat­ter of ur­gency (that is to say, by 4 pm on Mon­day, No­vem­ber 4th 2019). Should we fail to hear from you, we shall as­sume that you are un­will­ing to give the re­quest­ed un­der­tak­ing and pro­ceed to file our client’s ap­pli­ca­tion for ur­gent in­junc­tive re­lief to re­strain you from pre-empt­ing the court and de­stroy­ing the said re­port in a naked at­tempt to de­feat our client’s rights un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act”.