PORUS, Manchester – A bid by prominent Mandeville attorney-at-law Norman Godfrey to challenge the authority of a police investigator of the Financial Investigation Division (FID) to lay charges against his client, did not get off the ground on Thursday, as copies of Police Force Orders produced in the Porus Court, proved the witness to be a member of the Jamaica Constabulary Force.

Godfrey was seeking to draw a parallel with the motion filed by attorney Hugh Wildman on behalf of his client, former education Minister Ruel Reid, which had challenged the statutory authority of the FID to lay criminal charges.

Parish Judge Ann Marie Grainger had begun her review of the indictment, preparatory to announcing the acquittal of Elwardo Elliott, one of the eight defendants charged in the Manchester Municipal Corporation $400 million fraud case, when Godfrey indicated that he wished to address the court on an issue that “impacts this matter (the case in court) in a significant way”.

Judge Grainger, although remarking that Godfrey’s application would “delay my ruling to listen all over again to new submissions” allowed the attorney to proceed with his application which he said he had transmitted beforehand by e-mail to the judge and the Crown prosecutors.

As it turned out in court, Godfrey, who represents former Corporation Roads and Works Deputy Superintendent Sanja Elliott – the main accused in the fraud case, his wife Tashagaye and his employee Dwayne Sibblies – was targetting the bona fides of Detective Corporal Fabian Parnell.

Parnell had identified himself in court when he testified in October last year during the trial at the Manchester Parish Court in Mandeville, that he was an “authorised investigative officer of the Financial Investigation Division (FID)”.

Before the prosecutors referred the attorney to the Constabulary’s weekly internal information organ Force Orders, Godfrey claimed that Parnell, one of the investigators and an arresting officer in the multi-million dollar fraud case, “was acting pursuant to the FID and all his conduct was under the auspices of the FID Act”.

This was to suggest that Parnell as an FID investigator did not have the authority to lay criminal charges, as attorney Wildman had claimed in respect to his client. Ruel Reid and Reid’s co-accused.

Godfrey later told the court”I will withdraw the application as I am now provided evidence of his (Parnell’s) appointment”.