Lawyers to debate motion of no confidence against Attorney General on July 15

Lawyers will debate a motion of no confidence against Attorney General Reginald Armour, SC, on July 15.

A notice issued by the Law Association on Friday announced the date.

A group of 40 attorneys had requisitioned the Law Association on June 15 to convene a special general meeting (SGM) to debate a motion of no confidence against Armour, the titular head of the bar, after details of Armour's possible breach of the legal code of ethics were revealed in a Miami case against people charged in the Piarco corruption case.

In a letter to Kiel Taklalsingh, the secretary of the Law Association Bijili Lalla said the association had written to Armour "advising him of your letter wherein a requisition for a special general meeting (SGM) was made."

"Please be advised that the requested will be held on 15th July, 2022 at 2 pm at a location to be announced. We will advise you once a location has been identified for the physical hosting of the event. Further, we advise that the meeting will be facilitated in a hybrid format, ie the membership's access to the SGM will be virtual or physical based on individual member preference," the letter said.

Armour, 65, who was appointed Attorney General in a surprise Cabinet reshuffle on March 16, failed to disclose his full involvement as a defence attorney for former government minister Brian Kuei Tung and Renee Pierre who are charged in the Piarco case, when he met with US lawyers prosecuting Kuei Tung and others in a $200 million civil asset forfeiture case dragging on in Miami for 18 years.

On May 2, a US judge automatically disqualified Armour and the law firm Sequor Law on the grounds of an apparent conflict of interest as Armour was both chief prosecutor and a former defence attorney.

The government has since retained another US law firm, White and Case, to appeal the ruling by US judge Remember to Diaz only against the disqualification of the law firm. A request for an expedited appeal has been thrown out by the US appeal court. Former attorney general Faris Al-Rawi has replaced Armour as the client representative for the government in the US lawsuit which comes up for trial in September.

The Law Association has also opened a separate investigation into the AG's conduct and has made a request for all the documents in the matter.