After arguing that the statements and documents relied upon by the Crown were illegally obtained, defence attorney Hugh Wildman on Tuesday (October 7) urged the court to reject an indictment order against Ruel Reid and co-accused in their multimillion-dollar fraud case.

Wildman represents former Caribbean Maritime University (CMU) president Professor Fritz Pinnock.

Calling the prosecution’s case “stillborn,” Wildman urged the court to reject the indictment order unless fresh evidence, unconnected to the Financial Investigations Division (FID), is presented.

An indictment is a formal document detailing the charges an accused person will face at trial and is typically preferred by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

He said the evidence was gathered either directly by FID officers or by police acting on the FID’s instructions. These are actions he claimed in court were outside the scope of the agency’s legal authority.

Wildman also questioned the legitimacy of the FID’s role in criminal proceedings, stating that the agency was never designed to act as an enforcement body.

“This prosecution is stillborn. It has no life,” Wildman said in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court, where senior Parish Judge Sanchia Burrell was overseeing.

“You cannot ground a prosecution in those circumstances,” he added.

He also cited the FID Act, arguing that the disclosure and use of statements collected during FID investigations breach the statute. According to Wildman, Section 10 of the Act strictly limits who may access or disclose investigative materials, and any breach of that provision is a criminal offence.

He said, “The sum total of our argument is that the statements that the prosecution intends to rely on to ask you for a court order for indictment, those statements are illegal. They are in breach of a statute, which clearly indicates that those statements ought not to be disclosed to anyone.”

Wildman also questioned the search warrants used to obtain key documents, which he said were also invalid.

In describing the foundation of the investigation being compromised, and all resulting evidence being invalid to him, he said, “Fruits from a poisoned tree are poison. Nought from nought is nought, so we are left with nothing to ground this case”.

He stated that without alternative, independent evidence, the prosecution could not meet the legal threshold to support an indictment under the Criminal Justice (Administration) Act.

He reminded the court of his own involvement in helping to establish the FID regionally and stressed that its legal mandate was limited to investigating financial crimes and making recommendations to the minister of finance, not arresting individuals or initiating charges.

“The FID is a creature of statute and must operate within the four corners of that statute. It has no binary powers. It was never meant to become a second police force,” he said.

In the end, he reiterated that any action taken outside of the agency’s statutory limits rendered the resulting prosecution unlawful.

“From the beginning, we’ve said these charges are a nullity. They have no life. They are founded on an illegal act,” Wildman said.

On the part of the prosecution, in Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court on Tuesday, they requested additional time to respond to the defence’s arguments and proposed Monday, which was accepted by the judge.

Burrell indicated that she would rule on the application after both the prosecution and the defence had made their submissions.

She also stated that she would decide on an application for additional time for defence attorneys, following submissions that they were given late disclosure of documents over 1,000 pages long only two weeks before the trial and that despite their best efforts, they had not yet perused all the documents.

The defence lawyers also complained about the manner in which the documents were disclosed and the format, with Wildman arguing that the documents should have been provided in physical form instead of electronically.

Attorney Carolyn Chuck, representing Reid’s daughter, Sharelle, submitted during her application that it was virtually impossible for her to adequately represent her client, given the short time available to review the thousands of pages of documents disclosed.

In response, the prosecution indicated that disclosure had been ongoing since 2019, when the case began, and that it had tried its best to disclose the documents in a way that would be helpful to the Crown.

Prosecutor Ashtelle Steele, who expressed disappointment at the defence’s position, noted that the Crown had asked for the trial to be postponed to February of next year, but the defence strongly objected.

Reid, along with his wife Sharen and Sharelle, Pinnock, and Jamaica Labour Party Councillor Kim Brown Lawrence, are currently before the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court for trial in relation to an alleged J$50 million fraud.

The group faces charges under various laws, including the Corruption Prevention Act, conspiracy to defraud, misconduct in public office at common law, and breaches of the Proceeds of Crime Act.