DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A de­ci­sion by the Privy Coun­cil to dis­miss a fi­nal ap­peal over a $83 mil­lion de­fault judg­ment against the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EM­BD) has no ef­fect on an over $300 mil­lion pend­ing case brought by the State com­pa­ny against three for­mer of­fi­cials, a group of con­trac­tors and Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. 

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at his of­fice, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, ac­cused Mooni­lal of con­flat­ing the cas­es and mis­rep­re­sent­ing the po­ten­tial im­pact of the most re­cent de­ci­sion hand­ed down by the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil on Tues­day. 

He not­ed that in the re­cent case, EM­BD ap­pealed con­sec­u­tive de­ci­sions by a High Court and Court of Ap­peal to grant Ju­nior Sam­my a de­fault judg­ment in re­la­tion to ar­rears on a con­tract, while the car­tel case against Mooni­lal and the oth­ers is over an al­leged con­spir­a­cy to award con­tracts to a group of con­trac­tors in the run-up to the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion. 

Ar­mour said, “Noth­ing pro­nounced by the Privy Coun­cil in that mat­ter in­volv­ing the EM­BD and Mr Ju­nior Sam­my’s com­pa­ny af­fects the mer­its of the case the EM­BD is go­ing to tri­al with­in the car­tel claim ver­sus Mr Mooni­lal or any of the oth­er de­fen­dants in that mat­ter.”

Re­spond­ing to per­ceived crit­i­cism over EM­BD’s de­ci­sion to pur­sue the fi­nal ap­peal in the Ju­nior Sam­my case, Ar­mour not­ed that EM­BD con­ced­ed that it could not pur­sue a de­fence al­leg­ing fraud as ini­tial­ly claimed. 

He not­ed that the ap­peal al­so dealt with the op­er­a­tion of FIDIC con­tracts and whether Ju­nior Sam­my could seek com­pen­sa­tion af­ter EM­BD’s debt to it was used to ob­tain a $40 mil­lion fi­nanc­ing arrange­ment with a bank. 

He al­so point­ed out that in Au­gust 2020, EM­BD paid $87,324,469.86 of the dis­put­ed mon­ey to Ju­nior Sam­my’s lawyers and $37,424,772.80 in­to a court in­ter­est-bear­ing ac­count to clear the debt if it lost the ap­peal. 

“The EM­BD has been pru­dent and re­spon­si­ble and has wast­ed no tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey in pur­su­ing these mat­ters,” Ar­mour said. 

Ju­nior Sam­my’s lawyer Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, is­sued an al­most im­me­di­ate re­sponse to Ar­mour. 

He claimed that EM­BD on­ly made the ad­vance pay­ments af­ter he and his col­leagues raised con­cerns over the mer­its of the ap­peal.

“Those sums were or­dered by the Court of Ap­peal to be paid in­to Court, be­cause the con­trac­tor sub­mit­ted to the Court of Ap­peal that the ap­peal of EM­BD did not have any prospects of suc­cess, and ap­plied for the judg­ment debt to­geth­er with in­ter­est to be paid in­to court as se­cu­ri­ty for the judg­ment debt,” Ma­haraj said. 

He al­so claimed that there was no con­ces­sion by EM­BD as he point­ed out that the Privy Coun­cil ruled that the fraud de­fence claim was fan­ci­ful and spec­u­la­tive. 

Mooni­lal al­so is­sued a re­lease in which he again crit­i­cised the cur­rent EM­BD board for pur­su­ing the cas­es. 

He ac­cused the board of fa­cil­i­tat­ing po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da. 

“This is the same Board, the same lawyers, the same ad­vi­sors who have sued oth­er con­trac­tors with very sim­i­lar al­le­ga­tions. If you can­not prove in one; you can­not prove in any,” he said.