Judge to rule on Ruel Reid, Fritz Pinnock matter in February

CHIEF Parish Court Judge Chester Crooks will on February 4 indicate whether former senator and Education Minister Ruel Reid, president of the Caribbean Maritime University (CMU) Professor Fritz Pinnock, and several others will go to trial for the allegations of fraud brought against them.

Law enforcement agencies, in a coordinated strike in October last year, arrested and charged Reid, his wife Sharen and daughter Sharelle, Pinnock, and Councillor Kim Brown Lawrence (Jamaica Labour Party, Brown’s Town Division, St Ann) during early-morning raids at their houses, acting on allegations of financial improprieties in which funds were supposedly siphoned off from CMU and the Ministry of Education. They were subsequently brought before the Half-Way-Tree Criminal Court and charged, but subsequently released on bail.

Attorney Hugh Wildman has been lobbying the court to have the case against Reid and Pinnock thrown out on the basis that his clients were arrested by officers of the Financial Investigations Division (FID), which, he says, has no jurisdiction to do so as they are purely an investigative body and not empowered to carry out arrests.

Wildman has maintained that by arresting both applicants, the FID acted outside of its statutory powers and, therefore, what it did is to be considered a “nullity”.

Yesterday, following the final submissions by the prosecution and responses by the defence, the judge indicated that he would make his ruling on February 4, 2020.

— Alicia Dunkley-Willis