PM Bird sues law firm
ST JOHN’S, Antigua – Prime Minister Lester Bird has sued the law firm of Lake & Kentish, the latest defendants in a series of lawsuits in the aftermath of allegations made by a teenage girl that she had sex with the Antiguan leader and pushed drugs on his behalf.
Bird, who had denied knowing the minor, and who was cleared by a government-appointed investigator on the basis of lack of evidence, has accused the girl’s lawyers of seeking to defame him by filing a counter lawsuit last month.
Bird said Lake & Kentish knows that the allegations of the teenager are “manifestly unfounded, incapable of proof, and intended to use the process of the court for the sole purpose of airing malicious untruths and furthering defamatory statements”.
A junior lawyer at the legal firm said this week that there was no one there to comment on the matter.
The teenager at the centre of the controversy, Monique Kim Barua, has also been sued by Bird after her allegations in a four-hour videotaped interview, made public in May. The video has since been copied and circulated throughout the island.
Bid is also suing Antigua’s Observer media group for producing the tape and the two journalists who conducted the interview as well as a member of the opposition United Progressive Party (UPP) for showing the video at public meetings.
At the same time, Barua and her mother, Jacqueline Fiedtkou, are jointly suing Bird for statutory rape, abduction, conspiracy and other sex-related charges, as well as Beverly Percival, one of the prime minister’s secretaries, and his brother, Ivor Bird.
Bird’s lawyers, John Fuller of Antigua and Anthony Astaphan of Dominica, who is also acting on behalf of Percival, have written to Lake & Kentish indicating their action.
“To buttress their argument of improper motivation, the attorneys . drew attention to the long-standing history of a strained relationship between the prime minister and the law firm of Lake & Kentish, and to the fact that it is the same Lake & Kentish that represents the organisation, POWA, that has consistently attacked the prime minister,” a statement from the Office of the Prime Minister said.
It added: “In further support of their claim of improper motivation by Lake and Kentish, Astaphan and Fuller pointed out that it was Lake and Kentish that advised the minor, Monique Kim Barua, when she swore an affidavit withdrawing her charge of rape against Ricardo Browne, also known as D J Richards.
“They said that this shows that Lake and Kentish were in contact with Miss Barua since November 2001, before she made a videotape with allegations against the prime minister. Yet there is no record that Lake and Kentish made any complaint to any authority or made a claim against the prime minister.”