There’s an ongoing battle for ownership of the mega-million dollar newspaper, Newsday. The company launched by Daniel Chookolingo in 1993, is getting no media publicity because two years after its launch, the daily immediately became the fastest selling newspaper in Trinidad and Tobago outstripping the then 30-year old Trinidad Express and the mighty Guardian which was then over 75 years old. Both newspaper and their vast billion dollar media outfits have remained silent since the case was filed in the High Court in 2014.While Newsday’s up-to-date value remains shrouded, there was a valuation done a decade ago which put its worth at over $200 million dollars. Sources close to Mr Chookolingo says this is a bogus value which was given by the Steve Castagne controlled board to buy out minority shareholders to gain full control of his company.
New Call to Impeach CJ Archie
:for Misbehaviour in Public Office
Is CJ Ivor Archie'a Behaviour a Subversion of the Law?
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Part of a Conspiracy to Defraud Chookolingo
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Laws broken are Documented in Transcripts
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T&T May Now Be Lawless State
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Chookolingo Must Consider Filing a Complaint to the United Nations Under the Protocol to the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights
TT Justice Foundation has learnt that on 28th March 2022, the Prime Minister (PM), the President and the leader of the Opposition were alerted of serious breaches and / or the subverting the rule of law by the country’s Chief Justice (CJ). The complaints made against the Chief Justice, Ivor Archie and his panel of Judges, Justices Moosai and Madam Jones, arose from a matter in the Court of Appeal in 2019. The complaint was made by Daniel Chookolingo, the founder of Newsday newspaper, and stems from a hearing before the Chief Justice on 22nd November 2019. That appeal was a ‘simple’ bias complaint against another brother judge, Justice James Aboud. Justice Aboud dismissed Chookolingos ownership of Newsday on a preliminary point without hearing evidence and compounded it when giving judgment against Chookolingo by making all kinds of disparaging and derogatory remarks against him and even mentioned that he had discussed the case brought by Chookolingo beforehand with his sibling brother, who he called an imposter. Judges are forbidden from discussing ongoing matters with family or people not legitimately connected with cases before them. It seems that Judge Aboud, like all good and bent One Percenters, who are known to bring private information, but in this case, State business, into his inner family circle. The Abouds are a super wealthy family that control Jimmy Aboud, the Textile King, run by Gregory Aboud of DOMA fame and Mode Alive which is run by Gary Aboud as well as many real estate holdings and company investments throughout Trinidad and worldwide. Another One Percenter, Steve Castagne, is the man who hijacked the company from Daniel Chookolingo by illegal and fraudulent means whilst he was abroad around 1994. At the time, Chookolingo did not suspect that it was the self-same directors he left to run the company that engineered stalking tactics that caused him to relocate his family abroad. But based on his recent discovery of similar tactics used on other people he knows he added the pieces together. These are the people who now control large sections of the media business by obvious crooked means, and many other large businesses, AKA the One Percenters, and who are openly connected with other business people to share interlocking directorships with, to control the commanding heights of the economy which include state contracts, hence how the word oligarchs became popular. Mr Chookolingo and Mrs Mills, former editor of Newsday, now deceased, were said to be unusually resistant to their criminal tactics. Mills family gave way to the Newsday mafia when she passed away in 2014 while Daniel Chookolingo continues fighting them.
We now fast forward to November 2019, when Chookolingos case was brought before the Court of Appeal headed by the Chief Justice. Ivor Archie who was President of the Panel which included Justices Moosai and Madam Justice Jones, who must now decide if the case should go before the Privy Council in London. Unknown to Chookolingo, the entire hearing was staged to dismiss his case. His then attorney, Raj Joseph, recently retired President of the Equal Opportunity Tribunal (EOT), which is equivalent to a High Court Judge with the same rights and privileges of a high court judge, was barred by law from appearing before any local court for ten (10) years after his stint at the EOT. This is trite law known by all legal practitioners. Mr Joseph is well known to the CJ since it was the very same Ivor Archie who appointed him to the EOT in 2009, and later to another judicial appointment in 2011. Raj Joseph is therefore no stranger to the bench but in 2019 was unlawfully addressing it with full knowledge of at least the CJ, but probably all three judges must have known this hearing was prohibited by law. So that when Joseph appeared before the full court of appeal, they must have all known that this was illegal, improper and glaring, going in the face of the maxim that ‘justice must not be done but must appear to be done.’ It did not seem to matter to CJ Ivor Archie, Justice Moosai and Justice Jones about their duty to do justice and their faithfulness to the Constitution. Their joint decision to hear Mr Joseph’s arguments for Mr Chookolingo (or lack of arguments thereof as Chookolingo claims) leaves an indelibly corrupt mark on the entire judiciary and is likely to have a profound effect on future persons wishing to seek appointments to the bench. It is nothing short of a ‘Kangaroo’ court. These 3 Court of Appeal judges, the most senior in the land, not including Justice Aboud, are allegedly being handled by the real Newsday ‘imposter,’ a term used by Justice Aboud to describe Chookolingo, whose mission is to disenfranchise Mr Chookolingo to hand over Newsday to the One Percent clique. In fact, if all indications are correct, these are the same people who are in control of the States’ spying apparatus and the dreaded Pegasus program to infiltrate and destroy lives and companies at the highest levels, all for personal or political gain. They are said to also control the opposition thanks to Pegasus.
When asked by attorneys for their view on the prohibited hearing involving Mr Raj Joseph and the CJ, they all agree that this situation is frightening and a disgrace which will leave a stigma on the entire judicial system that will not soon be forgotten. One attorney, whose infamy for acts against aggrieved citizens like Chookolingo is seeking help from the supposedly legitimate arm of the State in getting justice.” Another attorney stated that “while these stories are familiar, this is the first case of it being so blatant. All legal principles have been abandoned.” “The words subverting the rule of law, conspiracy and machinations immediately come to mind. What were these guys thinking?”
A third attorney stated these three judges must surely be categorised as “Enemies of the State with this behaviour and is deception at its worst. I myself fell betrayed by the revelations.”
TTJF is of the view that these breaches involve core beliefs of justice and fair play must be rejected by all right thinking members of the judiciary in the first instance and the other members of the judiciary and the Law Association who must demand the immediate resignation of the CJ and Justice Moosai.
Justice Jones who has now retired from the bench has since taken up an appointment as Chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC) and must also be made to vacate that position since she is forever tainted by these events. She must not be allowed to continue in her powerful, omniscient, unchecked and shameless way at the PSC that she conducted herself during the Court of Appeal. Given what we know, with the past behaviour of many of these office holders, they are there to carry out the instructions of the high and mighty elite in the society and trample on anyone who gets in the way of their crooked ‘advancement.’
Section 137 of the Constitution provides for the removal of the CJ to be initiated by the Prime Minister. The President thereafter appoints a tribunal to look into the circumstances of any breaches by the CJ.
Based on the last time a report was made for an investigation into alleged improper behaviour of the CJ, the PM refused to initiate an investigation and the matter died for want of prosecution. This matter is quite different since the claims against the CJ are clear and definable breach of the laws and are recorded in transcripts issued by the Courts themselves. The CJ was clearly involved in a conspiracy against Mr Chookolingo to deprive Chookolingo from his company, Newsday.
Is this the kind of country T&T has become? Where clear breach of the laws and Constitution are treated with arrogance with no regard whatsoever for the laws? By the highest officers?
Must there be an investigation before an investigation is initiated by the PM? If the allegations and charges brought against the CJ and other members of the judiciary are without foundation, we urge the powers that be to charge Mr Chookolingo for scandalising the courts and the country. Otherwise, the investigation against Messrs Ivor Archie must begin in earnest and let the chips fall where they may. What makes the aggrieved acts of Mr Archie even graver is that he is the third highest person in the hierarchy of T&T, after the President and the PM.
With all due respect to the PM and the President; the permissiveness, law-breaking, slackness, inaction and very high possibility of fraud against upstanding citizens must be dealt with decisively and firmly if we are to turn back the downward spiral of corruption in Trinidad and Tobago. The country has slipped into a morass due to the continued lack of any kind of action for office holders, some conspiring for gain. Is this situation going to be allowed to go on until CJ Archie and others have retired or resigned? Is this what T&T has become? These complaints made against the CJ are not some fly-by-night allegations that involve his personal lifestyle like the last allegation. There are overt, defined, clear, distinct, unambiguous and unmistakable breaches whether knowingly or not. These 3 judges are in clear breach of their duties. If CJ Archie is not disciplined in a timely manner for these breaches of the Constitution, more calls for equality before the law will surely be raised. Will citizens now be able to raise this refusal by the state to act against the CJ and other judges as a defense to charges before the said judiciary? Added to that, one wonders if the office holders are not themselves guilty of a failure to act by not bringing charges against obviously guilt parties. This must be a test case that must go to the Privy Council to be resolved.
In the case of the CJ, Justices Moosai and Jones, the facts read like a ‘confession’ waiting for the authorities to lay charges.
TTJF understands that Chookolingo was advised to file a complaint to the United Nations under the Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but has been resisting such a move.
What about the many other forms of corruption plaguing T&T?
There’s the ongoing stealing of the Caroni state lands, the foreign exchange catastrophe leading us into failed state status while the Central Bank looks on approvingly? What about the rip-off of almost all State contracts, which are given to friends, family or for kick-backs while the authorities turn a blind eye or themselves take a pay-off? What about the illegal use of State resources like Pegasus to spy on innocent people, where these were over 600,000 occurrences in 2017? No arrests were made for all this unchecked spying simply because it was not ‘legitimate’ spying. Indeed, a legitimate question is, was CJ Ivor Archie spied upon by Pegasus and there are dark secrets that were used against him?
TTJF also calls on the President of the Republic, Her Excellency Paula Mae-Weekes, to immediately revoke the appointment of Mr Raj Joseph as the country’s 5th Ombudsman with immediate effect for his breach of the Code of Ethics by appearing before the Court of Appeal in November 2019 in breach of the law. The President appointed Mr Joseph as the Ombudsman in May 2021 for a period of 3 years.
These developments do not bode well for the appointment of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as the final appellate Court in T&T and the removal of the Privy Council. CCJ judges are normally selected from the small island states of the Caribbean who are subject to the same levels of pressure and influence as Ivor Archie and judges who are mainly nominated by the country’s CJ as head of the Judicial and Legal Services Commission (JLSC). The Law Association (LATT) has been asking for a say in judicial appointments for some time now. But this is what happens when a small clique (One Percenters) is allowed to run the country.
Interestingly, Donna Prowell, was also recently appointed as the new Equal Opportunity Tribunal (EOT). Presided over by the JLSC, whose Chairman is CJ Ivor Archie. Is this a case of musical chairs? She was one of the attorneys who the Newsday team retained in the matter against Chookolingo and therefore another nexus in the saga.
The other main attorney representing the Newsday team was Debra Peake, SC, who went on to reap so many State and Government briefs, each worth millions. She was the attorney who represented Petrotrin in their fight against A&V Oil fiasco that ended in defeat for the country, costing many millions of dollars.
