Former AG Basil Williams rejects allegations that he usurped powers of DPP

Former Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Basil Williams SC has rubbished allegations that under the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Administration he usurped the authority of the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) and instructed that criminal charges be laid against Officials of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C).

“I assert, de bene esse, without let or hindrance that at all material times AG Williams acted in furtherance of the Rule of law and never attempted to interfere with the Office of the DPP…,” Williams wrote in a Facebook statement on Sunday.

The allegations, which the former Attorney General has since described as libellous, first appeared on page 11 of the Saturday, October 24, 2020 Edition of the Kaieteur Newspaper and subsequently repeated in the Guyana Times Newspaper on Sunday, October 25, 2020 on page 33. In both newspapers, the statements were attributed to the current Attorney General Anil Nandllall.

In the Guyana Times article, Nandlall alleged that political-directed charges filed against PPP/C officials, “for which Special Prosecutors were, specifically, retained and directed by then Attorney General Basil Williams, constitutes a violation of Article 187 of the Constitution, as well as an abrogation of the Doctrine of Separation of Powers.”
But in a bid to set the record straight, Williams made it clear that it was the Office of the DPP that determined what charges reached the Courts in the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) matters.

“I specifically reject out of hand these specious and unsubstantiated hallucinatory excursions undertaken by Nandlall it appears, every full moon,” the former Attorney General said.