Governor’s legal fight ‘desperate’ says QC
(CNS): The legal team representing the governor’s office in the latest courtroom battle over the release of a secret document relating to the infamous Operation Tempura enquiry were accused Wednesday of “desperation” by the QC representing the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The office has ordered the release of the report under the freedom of information (FOI) law but the governor has fought tooth and nail for three years to keep a lid on the document.During this latest judicial review the governor has raised yet more new eleventh hour arguments against release. Ian Paget-Brown, QC, who is representing the governor in the controversial dispute, argued that the commissioner has no jurisdiction to release the document because the original FOI requester had withdrawn the request and that a criminal investigation is now underway into the former senior investigating officer on the ill-fated internal police probe, Martin Bridger.
However, when the governor’s lawyer advanced the new arguments, Monica Carss-Frisk, QC, representing the ICO, responded with her concerns that the governor was grasping at anything to simply stop the release of the document.
“There is air of desperation to make sure this report is not disclosed,” said Carss-Frisk, as she urged the judge to treat the latest arguments with a degree of scepticism, coming so late in the day, and argued without any real substance.
She pointed out that during last year’s re-examination of the decision to release the report by the ICO under the direction of Sir Alan Moses, who heard the first judicial review, there had been no mention of the criminal investigation and that despite arguing that it would impact this current judicial review, the governor had not offered any real substance to indicate how the latest alleged probe would impact this release or how genuine the investigation still was.
The alleged probe into Bridger came following another complaint he had made regarding criminal conduct of the UK officials embroiled in the whole Tempura affair. The SIO on the enquiry had maintained from the beginning that he believed an entry into a local newspaper to look for evidence of police corruption by staff authorized by the former police commissioner, Stuart Kernohan, was an unauthorized frolic.
However, statements from both Kernohan and his chief superintendent at the time, John Jones, as well as evidence they gave under oath in court indicated that the entry was not simply an unlawful jaunt but an operation disclosed to the governor at the time, the attorney general and the UK’s overseas territories security advisor.
This, Bridger has claimed, put an entirely different light on the Tempura probe, which he says would never have lasted more than a few weeks if he had been told by the UK officials that they knew about the entry.
Despite the evidence from Jones and Kernohan, Bridger’s claims were dismissed by the RCIPS, and Police Commissioner David Baines stated last August that following Bridger’s claims, counter claims had come from elsewhere about possible criminal conduct on the part of Bridger.
In court on Wednesday it was implied by the attorneys that the probe was still live.
Bridger, who is currently visiting Cayman as he continues a separate but related civil case, said he could not comment on the alleged investigation raised in the court and CNS understands that Bridger has to date not be interviewed in connection with the alleged crime. CNS has contacted the RCIPS regarding this latest twist in the seven year-long Tempura saga and is awaiting a response.
During the courtroom hearing yesterday Bridger’s alleged crime was not spelled out by the governor’s attorney and Carrs-Frisk questioned whether the probe was really still live, and if it was the governor needed to demonstrate why it would have any impact on the issues at hand, which should have been confined to the narrow remaining argument under the FOI law.
The substantive argument on which the judicial review was granted rested on whether or not the commissioner should have released the documents under section 21 of the FOI law and how it relates to the conduct of public affairs.
following submissions from both sides, the acting judge in the case, Justice Tim Owens, QC, said he would retire to consider the arguments and promised to have a decision within one month.
Should the judge make an order upholding the commissioner’s decision that the report should be released under the terms of the FOI law, it is not clear what course of action the governor will take. Given the resources and effort that has been exerted by two governors over the last three years to keep the report out of the public domain, the UK official is very likely to seek another route of appeal and continue the fight.
Category: Local News
Then you and all the people who breached the property rights of Seales as well as the right of the Caymanian people to have a free and un-tethered media, should be in jail. You were simply conspirators to a criminal act and no one at any level has the right to authorise such entry simply to prevent a free press from accessing information which exposes corruption.
Clearly posted by someone who doesn’t have a clue what any of this is about.
Some [people] need to be in jail along with the UK puppet masters who have rip this place off and are continuing doing so, yet they run around here pointing fingers at others and accusing them of being corrupt which they claim they were here to investigate how hypocritical can one be??? Give us or friggin documents and the originals too. We have paid good money for them.
I can state categorically that claims by Bridger about the search are nonsense. At the time I entered the Net News offices on 3 September 2007 the Director OT at the FCO, Leigh Turner, was in contact with the then Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, who had already given ACC John Yates (Bridger’s boss) the job of setting up a team to run what became Operation Tempura.
By October/November 2007 the original complaints against Seales and Ennis had been found to be complete nonsense but Tempura had already shifted up a gear and started to expand outside the original remit.
According to a 2011 FOI release by the Met, in February 2008 they were so committed to the expanded Tempura investigation that John Yates put in place the measures that effectively handed the investigation over to private contractors during May/June 2008. At that point Tempura was little more than a runaway train with the people of the Cayman Islands picking up the tab for the eventual wreck.
The bottom line is that in October/November 2007 there was ample evidence that the original object of the investigation was dead in the water but by then the potential of turning it into ‘a nice little earner’ was just too tempting. Mr Bridger is correct in saying that Tempura could have been closed down after a few months but the reasons for that not happening have nothing to do with anyone outside the investigation.
As for the FOI issue. Based on what I’ve heard it’s been a complete dog’s dinner with highly paid lawyers making a mess of presentations no more complicated than those I successfully made some years ago before tribunals in the UK without any legal support at all. Judging by the earlier Judicial Review this one is going to run to CI$200K+ per side. I’ve gone through the same exercise in the UK for the cost of my bus fare to the Tribunal, paper, envelopes and a few 1st Class stamps – CI$10 max! There is something fundamentally flawed in an FOI process that can, as this has, cost the public C$1million arguing over a few sheets of paper and it needs to be fixed PDQ. Bluntly, if I’d realised where this was going to end up the application would never have been filed in the first place.