"IT WAS like having tonnes of bricks on your shoulders,” former prime minister Basdeo Panday said of corruption charges that were brought against him, wife Oma, businessman Ishwar Galbaransingh and former works minister Carlos John in relation to the controversial Piarco Airport expansion project.
On Monday, Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard, SC, withdrew the 18-year-old matter on grounds that the prosecution would have faced difficulties in achieving a “fair prospect of conviction” if the trial proceeded.
The four were expected to go face a preliminary enquiry before Magistrate Adia Mohammed.
The Pandays were charged with corruptly receiving TT$250,000 on December 30, 1998, from John and Galbaransingh in exchange for giving Northern Construction Ltd a contract for the airport project. Galbaransingh was the company’s chairman.
John and Galbaransingh were also accused of giving the former prime minister money as an inducement or reward in relation to the Piarco airport project. The four were charged in 2005.
The $1.6 billion airport project was commissioned under the former United National Congress (UNC) administration which governed Trinidad and Tobago between 1995-2001.
In September 1996, Panday had appointed a task force to accelerate the project, which included John and Galbaransingh.
The four were charged during the term of the former Patrick Manning-led PNM government, which won the 2001 general election.
Three other corruption cases arising out of the project, involving bid-rigging, kickbacks, bid inflation and fraud, are still awaiting trial.
On Monday, Gaspard told Magistrate Mohammed, “…Having regard to the fact that several key witnesses have now become unavailable and bearing in mind…my guiding yardsticks, those being whether or not in the circumstances to prosecute this matter or in the prosecution of this matter there will be a fair prospect of conviction and whether to prosecute this matter, if on the evidence, there is a fair prospect of conviction such that prosecution will be in the public interest, I have decided to go no further with this matter.”
In a Sunday Newsday interview, Panday, 89, said while he is relieved that the charges have finally been dismissed, it has not yet sunk in.
But he stressed the matter has taken a severe toll on him and his family.
“This has been hanging over my head for the last 18 years and it has now been removed. So there is a feeling of great relief. But it was hanging over my head, I had to re-orient my whole life because I did not know what was going to happen. And so I lived in state of utter torment, I would say, for 18 years,” he said via telephone from his Duncan Village, San Fernando home.
The former UNC political leader said during that time he lived in virtual paralysis.
“You don’t know what is being done. You don’t know if they are planning new things. So you really live in a state of confusion and doubt about what will happen to your life. And so it becomes very difficult to plan anything.
“It was like havi
