Last Updated on Friday, 13 March 2026, 18:11 by Writer
Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sharon Roopchand-Edwards Friday afternoon told an extradition committal hearing for Azruddin and Nazar Mohamed that she could not find a notebook containing notes based on a template of a statement which was modified before submission to a United States (US) prosecutor.
“No, Your Honour. I’ve been checking throughout my entire lunch. No, I did not find the notebook,” she told the court when the committal hearing resumed on Friday afternoon.
She also said she did not need additional time to locate the book.
The US late last year requested the Mohameds’ extradition to the US to stand trial in a Florida federal court for alleged wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering linked their gold trading business.
Ms Roopchand-Edwards, under cross examination by Defence Lawyer Roysdale Forde, said she did not know where the notebook was last left.
She said the book was not an important document and there were “my scribbles”, not anything relevant.
Before the lunchbreak, under cross-examination by Attorney-at-Law Roysdale Forde, who is representing Mr Nazar “Shell” Mohamed, the Permanent Secretary told the court definitively that she made notes based on the template of a statement that she had received via WhatsApp.
Ms Roopchand-Edwards on Thursday testified that she had used the template to draft a statement that was subsequently modified on the advice of Ministry of Foreign Affairs lawyers before it was submitted to Prosecutor for the United States, Attorney-at-Law Herbert McKenzie.
On Friday morning, she said the template was updated, noted on and “discarded” but the notebook was “probably somewhere in the office amongst many notebooks.”
Prosecutor McKenzie did not raise any objections.
As the afternoon session continued, the Principal Magistrate refused to allow any questions concerning the identity of the documents in the bundle that was received from the US Embassy.
The Principal Magistrate said all she did was synchronised the documents with the list.
She said she did not make a record of the documents, D1 to D65, or asked anyone to do so.
She also said she did not pass the documents to anyone in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for them to look at.
In response to Mr Forde, the Permanent Secretary said that in her absence, the Head of the Legal Department in the foreign ministry receives or reviews extradition requests.
The Principal Magistrate refused to allow Mr Forde’s question to Ms Roopchand-Edwards whether she knew the names of the departments of the foreign minister.
Mr Forde told the court that the Permanent Secretary never kept a copy of the documents, initialed or marked any of the documents.
