Attorneys – Sir Ronald Sanders willing to answer questions

Tue, Jan 10. 2012

Attorneys for Sir Ronald Sanders have strongly deplored the statement concerning him which emanated from the authories in Antigua and Barbuda last week.{{more}}

Mark Haslam of BCL Burton Copeland of London, in a statement dated January 6, said “The language of the statement and subsequent statements are both defamatory and wrong in describing legal process in matters such as this.”

The Antigua Observer reported last week that Sanders, Antigua and Barbuda’s former High Commissioner to the United Kingdom had been named by Antigua police as “a person of interest” in the Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries (IHI) Co Ltd Japan multimillion dollar fraud scandal dating back to the 1990s.

According to the Observer, the lead investigator in the Criminal Investigations Department, Detective Superintendent Nuffield Burnette, made a request for Sir Ronald, who is a SEARCHLIGHT columnist and a former World Trade Organisation (WTO) ambassador, to “present” himself to the police to be interviewed and to co-operate throughout the duration of the probe.

The newspaper reported that the police said all efforts to contact Sanders had proved futile, thus the urgent appeal for him to contact the Commissioner.

However, Haslam, in last Friday’s statement, said to say that Sir Ronald could not be reached is absurd, since he is a regional Commentator whose website and means of contact appear weekly throughout the Caribbean.

“Further, he appears regularly on television and the radio and he is active on the international stage,” the statement said.

The attorney from BCL Burton Copeland said Sir Ronald is willing to answer questions from the Antigua Police that are properly put to him.