By Prior Beharry
ATTORNEY General Reginald Armour has been disqualified by a United States appellate court from representing the Government of Trinidad and Tobago in an asset forfeiture case linked to the construction of the Piarco International Airport more than two decades ago.
The Florida Third District Court of Appeal comprising Judges Eric Hendon, Monica Gordo and Alexander Bokor on Wednesday affirmed the ruling made in April last year by Circuit Court Judge Reemberto Diaz.
The judge had approved a motion to disqualify Armour from the civil case after he had represented the defendant Brian Kuei Tung in a criminal matter with the same facts in a Trinidad court.
In their ruling the appellate court judges said they left the case of disqualification of counsel to the “sound discretion of the trial judge.”
They agreed that both Armour and the firm Sequor Law should be disqualified.
Coincidently, the ruling was delivered on the same day Armour called a press conference to explain his office’s failure to proffer a defence in a malicious prosecution case of nine former murder accused.
In the Florida matter, Armour filed an Appeal on June 1.
On March 30, two weeks after his appointment as AG, Armour disclosed his apparent conflict of interest to Sequor Law and said he was “walled off” by the firm.
Despite this, he signed off on a number of matters relating to the civil case in Miami including the settlement of invoices and an agreement for cooperating witnesses to testify against the Piarco accused in the criminal proceedings in Trinidad.
