Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

As the gen­er­al elec­tion swings in­to gear, po­lit­i­cal par­ties have be­gun to point barbs at one an­oth­er. Com­ing 'un­der the gun' is Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress chair­man, Jack Warn­er, who has been giv­en 28 days to re­spond to sev­er­al com­pa­nies de­mand­ing monies ($13,531,095) al­leged­ly made avail­able in 2007. In fact, Warn­er claimed he had re­ceived le­gal cor­re­spon­dence stat­ing that he owed $40 mil­lion. A brown un­marked en­ve­lope con­tain­ing sev­en writs were de­liv­ered to the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day.

But ac­cord­ing to Warn­er's at­tor­ney Om Lal­la they are ex­pect­ing more writs claim­ing that his client owes ad­di­tion­al mon­ey.

The en­ve­lope al­so con­tained an un­signed note stat­ing:

"As a con­cerned cit­i­zen of this beloved coun­try of ours I thought it is my du­ty to send this to you the me­dia so the coun­try will be in­formed who are peo­ple as­pir­ing for pub­lic of­fice. If the UNC chair­man is in­volved in all these mat­ters then we must ask our­selves are we get­ting change or ex­change in vot­ing for a new Gov­ern­ment." The com­pa­nies su­ing Warn­er are en­gaged in an as­sort­ment of busi­ness. The writ has al­leged­ly named Ren­raw In­vest­ments Ltd, CCAM and Com­pa­ny Ltd and Warn­er as de­fen­dants.

Writs were filed in the Port-of-Spain Civ­il Court on April 7 and 8, last week by at­tor­neys Ly­dia Men­don­ca and Neil Bis­nath. The com­pa­nies, all but one, are claim­ing that the monies were made avail­able be­tween Oc­to­ber 9 and No­vem­ber 1 of 2007. The claimants are de­mand­ing 12 per cent in­ter­est on the amount.

?The writs are claim­ing:

1. Point Lisas Con­struc­tion Ltd � $1,738,786

2. Ace Con­trac­tors Ltd � $1,801,042

3. Cy­clone Hy­dro Blast­ing Ltd � $1,945,133

4. Om­ni Au­to Ser­vices Ltd � $2,025,982

5 Mid­way Con­trac­tors Ltd � $1,946,859

6. Elite Se­cu­ri­ty Con­sul­tants � $2,028,601

7. Casa Con­trac­tors Ltd � $2,044,692