Wife paid $5000.00 for Taiwan case

User Rating:  / 0

Details

Parent Category: Nov 2011

Category: Week ending Nov 05th, 2011

Hits: 507

Former Attorney-General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Elvin Nimrod has admitted that his wife was paid $5000.00 after she was hired by the former New National Party (NNP) government to look after Grenada’s interest in the Taiwanese defaulting loan case in a New York court in 2007.

 In what some legal official on the island brand as a conflict of interest, Nimrod admitted that his American-born wife, Donzell Tucker-Nimrod did not charge any hefty legal fees for the legal work done on behalf of the Keith Mitchell-led NNP administration.

 He said that his wife did not ask for much to represent Grenada in its legal battles with Taiwan.

  “I should say this was almost a pro-bono, for all the work she has done for almost two years ... she only asked for a token of $5000.00”, he told reporters.

 Taiwan won the case due to the fact that the Mitchell government did not put in a legal defense to the case.

 According to Nimrod, there was no need for Grenada to put in a defense in the matter since the island had received the loan funds from Taiwan and the only course of action open was to throw itself at the mercy of the court.

 The former government minister also sought to brush aside claims in some local legal quarters that his wife was not qualified enough to handle such a high profile legal case.

 Nimrod stated that Donzell Tucker-Nimrod was duly admitted to practice law in the State of New York, and had given services to many State and City agencies and that she was “ well qualified” to have represented Grenada in the Taiwan court matter.

 Former Finance Minister, Anthony Boatswain who also attended the press conference found it laughable when he was asked if his administration had received parliamentary approval for the loans obtained from Taiwan.

 He said, that without approval Taiwan could not make any claims against the government as it is presently doing.

 This contrast sharply with statements known to have been made by former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Brian Francis who said that during his stint with government, he often refused attempts made by Taiwan to collect on loan payments from Grenada.

 According to Francis, the loans were not recorded in the system in the Ministry of Finance and he had informed the Taiwanese on several occasions that he could not authorize any payments to them on their requests for reimbursements of their funds.

 He spoke of Prime Minister Mitchell often forcing Taiwan to release monies to his administration by threatening to switch to Mainland China.

 “He (Keith Mitchell) used to call this particular guy from the (Taiwanese) Embassy and ask him for money. The guy would say to him, well, Prime Minister, you know we have to go to our Parliament to get the authority for the money.

 “Mitchell will then say to him, look man, we need the money, and we need it now, and ah going to Mainland China to get it. The guy will then say, no, no, no, please wait, let me see what I could do.

 According to Francis, the next day the requested funds from Taiwan will be sent to Grenada.

The former PS said that there was virtually no Parliamentary approval for these “unaccounted” for funds that Mitchell was able to solicit from the Taiwanese.

 Minister of State for Information, Senator Glen Noel said that checks made so far by the Tillman Thomas-led Congress government seem to indicate that only two of the four loan agreements signed with Taiwan had Parliamentary approval.

• < Prev