By Derek Achong From T&T Guardian

A lack of con­crete ev­i­dence on the mis­con­duct al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie was the main ba­sis ad­vanced by the British Queen’s Coun­sel who ad­vised Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley not to ini­ti­ate im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings against Archie.

The lawyer Howard Stevens, QC al­so ac­knowl­edged that the Law As­so­ci­a­tion’s in­ves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee had dif­fi­cul­ties with the fact that nei­ther Archie nor Row­ley re­spond­ed to the al­le­ga­tions dur­ing its in­ves­ti­ga­tion. One of the al­le­ga­tions was that the CJ ap­proached Row­ley di­rect­ly for as­sis­tance to get HDC hous­es for three peo­ple.

He not­ed that his ad­vice was based on the un­der­stand­ing Row­ley de­nied that there was any com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Archie.

“If, how­ev­er, there was a What­sApp com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the Chief Jus­tice and the Prime Min­is­ter, my ad­vice could dif­fer. If, there­fore, con­trary to my un­der­stand­ing, there was such a com­mu­ni­ca­tion, I would want to con­sid­er mat­ters fur­ther,” Stevens said.

Row­ley did not re­lease the ad­vice nor the iden­ti­fy the per­son who pro­vid­ed it, when he an­nounced that last week that he had dis­re­gard­ed the Law As­so­ci­a­tion’s rec­om­men­da­tion to trig­ger an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The 20-page le­gal opin­ion al­leged­ly pre­pared in April, was shared on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day.

In the doc­u­ment, Stevens con­duct­ed an analy­sis of the in­ves­tiga­tive re­port com­piled by a spe­cial com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by the as­so­ci­a­tion as well as the le­gal ad­vice on it, which was so­licit­ed from Dr Fran­cis Alex­is, QC, of Grena­da and Ea­mon Courte­nay, SC, of Be­lize.

While Stevens con­sid­ered all the al­le­ga­tions raised against Archie that were in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the as­so­ci­a­tion, he main­ly fo­cused on those re­lat­ed to the CJ rec­om­mend­ing peo­ple for HDC hous­es.

The al­le­ga­tions are that Archie rec­om­mend­ed three peo­ple — Dy­lan Hug­gins, Car­ol Williams and Fe­li­cia Pierre to Row­ley; that he rec­om­mend­ed a num­ber of oth­ers based on the ad­vice of his friend and con­vict­ed fraud­ster Kern Romero and that he al­so made rec­om­men­da­tions to a se­nior HDC man­ag­er.

Stevens al­so con­sid­ered ev­i­dence over whether Archie was aware of Romero’s fraud­u­lent scheme.

He said based on the ev­i­dence over Archie’s lack of knowl­edge of Romero’s il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties, the al­le­ga­tions were in­suf­fi­cient to re­move Archie from of­fice at the end of a probe.

“If so, the HDC com­plaints could in my opin­ion po­ten­tial­ly be se­ri­ous enough to war­rant re­moval, and there­fore war­rant in­ves­ti­ga­tion, al­beit I am in­clined to the view that even then, ab­sent knowl­edge on the Chief Jus­tice’s part of Romero’s scheme (of which there is no ev­i­dence), they would prob­a­bly be ‘on the bor­der­line’,” Stevens said.

Like the as­so­ci­a­tion, Stevens ques­tioned al­le­ga­tions against Archie for at­tempt­ing to re­cruit a com­pa­ny, run by his oth­er friend and con­vict­ed fraud­ster Dil­lian John­son, to pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments for judges.

“There must, there­fore, it seems to me, be very con­sid­er­able doubt as to whether the com­plaint re­lat­ing to the dis­put­ed What­sApp ex­change be­tween the Chief Jus­tice and John­son could be sub­stan­ti­at­ed,” Stevens said.

He al­so stat­ed that al­le­ga­tions over Archie’s role in ad­vo­cat­ing for the re­moval of a se­cu­ri­ty de­tail as­signed to High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad were not suf­fi­cient to war­rant im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings.

The con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Archie arose in late 2017 af­ter a se­ries of news­pa­per re­ports ac­cused Archie of at­tempt­ing to per­suade the judges to change their State-pro­vid­ed se­cu­ri­ty in favour of a pri­vate com­pa­ny in which John­son worked.

Archie was al­so ac­cused of at­tempt­ing to fast-track HDC ap­pli­ca­tions for John­son, who has been con­vict­ed of fraud. The Law As­so­ci­a­tion is ex­pect­ed to meet to­day to con­sid­er what ac­tion if any, it could take based on Row­ley’s de­ci­sion.

For more on this story go to: http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/qcs-advice-to-pm-new-info-can-reopen-case-against-cj-6.2.892231.3bc10d40c3

EDITOR NOTE: Ivor Archie was formerly solicitor general of the Cayman Islands.