Paria CoE chair: DPP’s decision in keeping with commission’s findings

Former chair of the Commission of Enquiry into the deaths of four Land and Marine Construction Services (LMCS) divers, Jerome Lynch KC, says the decision taken by Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard to advise police to investigate Paria Fuel is in keeping with the commission’s findings.

In a media release last week, Gaspard said the commission’s findings and recommendations were not evidence and advised Police Commissioner Erla Harewood-Chrsitopher to investigate. He said that the only possible criminal offence committed was manslaughter by gross negligence.

“Unlike in the United Kingdom, there has been no statutory intervention in Trinidad and Tobago to create an offence known as corporate manslaughter” Gaspard said adding that he advised the top cop to have the deaths of the men investigated to determine if anyone or any entity may be culpable of manslaughter by gross negligence.

In a media release yesterday, Lynch said while the report stated that corporate manslaughter should be proffered against Paria Fuel, he recognised that the terminology, used in the UK, was not in keeping with T&T laws.

Lynch added though, that manslaughter by gross negligence, which exists within the laws of the country, encompasses the threshold needed for corporate manslaughter.

At the end of the commission of enquiry, Lynch and the commissioners had recommended that Paria be charged with “what is commonly known as corporate manslaughter.”

The commission’s findings also stated that there was insufficient evidence before it to recommend any individual be charged with an offence related to the divers’ deaths.

The commission of enquiry was initiated to investigate the tragic deaths of Rishi Nagassar, Fyzal Kurban, Kazim Ali Jr and Yusuf Henry. The men died after they were sucked into a Paria underwater pipeline on February 25, 2022, and became trapped for a few days. One man, Christopher Boodram, survived the incident.