FID application dismissed as judicial review for Reid-Pinnock case pending

The Supreme Court has dismissed an application by the Financial Investigations Division (FID) to set aside an order that stayed the multimillion-dollar fraud trial of former Minister of Education Ruel Reid and others.

Justice Courtney Daye had granted leave in June last year for Reid and Fritz Pinnock, president of the Caribbean Maritime University, to apply to the Judicial Review Court to quash the decision of Senior Parish Judge Chester Crooks for the trial to proceed.

Attorney-at-law Richard Small, who is representing the FID, had argued that it was improper for the claimants not to have served the FID in relation to the proceedings for judicial review. He pointed out that the FID was a relevant party and was deprived of the opportunity to consider whether aspects of the prosecution could proceed while the judicial review hearing took place.

Attorney-at-law Hugh Wildman, who is representing Reid and Pinnock, opposed the application.

Wildman said one could only ask for judicial review against a decision-maker and that that authority was Judge Crooks, who said he had a conflict of interest and could not try the case. Wildman said that lawyers from the Attorney General’s Department had represented Crooks when the application was made.

Justice Andrea Pettigrew Collins, in dismissing the application last month, agreed with Wildman that she had no jurisdiction to set aside or vary the order. The judge said it would be nonsensical to set aside or vary the order to facilitate the progress of the criminal prosecution in circumstances where it is possible for a finding to be made that all orders made by Judge Crooks are invalid and the order would have to start afresh.

The judge awarded legal costs to Reid and Pinnock.

Following an application before Judge Crooks last year that the charges against the accused in the case should be nullified because officers from the FID had no authority to arrest or bring charges, the judge ruled that the trial should proceed.

Judge Crooks then recused himself from the trial because of a conflict of interest. He later revealed that he attended Munro College while Reid was head boy.

The applicants are contending that Judge Crooks should have disqualified himself from ruling in the matter and are seeking to have his decision quashed.

Reid, his wife Sharen, their daughter Sharelle, along with Pinnock and Kim Lawrence, the Brown’s Town division councillor, were arrested and charged in 2019 for allegedly diverting public funds from the Ministry of Education and CMU. They are facing multiple fraud and corruption charges as well as breaches of the Proceeds of Crime Act.

They appeared in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court Thursday and were ordered to return on May 10.

The court was informed that proceedings are pending in the Judicial Review Court.

– Barbara Gayle