A com­pa­ny has with­drawn its case against an at­tor­ney, whose bank ac­counts were frozen as part of its bid to re­cov­er $7 mil­lion in funds paid to a con­trac­tor for a con­struc­tion project that al­leged­ly did not ma­te­ri­alise. 

The case was set to go to tri­al this week, but when it was called yes­ter­day morn­ing, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad was in­formed that Ad­vance Hose and Mar­ket­ing Lim­it­ed had en­tered in­to a con­sent po­si­tion with­out any ad­mis­sion of li­a­bil­i­ty with at­tor­ney Varun De­bideen. 

While the com­pa­ny agreed to dis­con­tin­ue its case against him, De­bideen, who re­peat­ed­ly de­nied any wrong­do­ing from the on­set, agreed to with­draw his pend­ing ap­peal over Jus­tice Seep­er­sad’s de­ci­sion to or­der his bank ac­counts frozen pend­ing the out­come of the sub­stan­tive case.  The out­come means that the freez­ing or­der against De­bideen’s ac­counts was lift­ed and the case will con­tin­ue against Cordell Philbert, Joash Ram­jat­tan, and his com­pa­ny ZA Lim­i­ty En­gi­neer­ing Con­sul­tan­cy. The case is now set for tri­al on Feb­ru­ary 11. 

In its sub­stan­tive case, the com­pa­ny claimed that on Ju­ly 19, 2023, it trans­ferred the mon­ey to Philbert, a con­trac­tor from Roy­al Palm Gar­dens, Mal­abar, Ari­ma. The mon­ey was pur­port­ed­ly a pay­ment for a prospec­tive con­struc­tion project it (the com­pa­ny) was pur­su­ing. 

The com­pa­ny claimed that Philbert did not per­form his con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions, and it sought to re­cov­er the funds it had ad­vanced.  In late Oc­to­ber last year, the com­pa­ny’s lawyers ob­tained a Nor­wich Phar­ma­cal or­der from a High Court judge in re­la­tion to the RBC Roy­al Bank (T&T) Lim­it­ed ac­count held by Philbert that the com­pa­ny trans­ferred the funds. Such or­ders seek to com­pel third par­ties such as fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to re­veal con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion of their clients, which can then be used to pur­sue lit­i­ga­tion over al­leged wrong­do­ing. 

That com­pa­ny claimed that Philbert’s fi­nan­cial records showed that af­ter re­ceiv­ing the funds, $6 mil­lion was trans­ferred to De­bideen’s ac­count held with Sco­tia­bank. It fur­ther claimed that $624,650 was trans­ferred to Ram­jat­tan’s com­pa­ny. 

Af­ter Jus­tice Seep­er­sad froze De­bideen’s ac­counts, he firm­ly de­nied that he was in­volved in any sus­pect­ed con­spir­a­cy as al­leged. He ad­mit­ted that he rep­re­sent­ed Ram­jat­tan and point­ed to a loan agree­ment for the mon­ey that he pre­pared for Philbert and his client. He claimed that the mon­ey paid by Philbert to Ram­jat­tan un­der the agree­ment was used to pay a por­tion of a sub­stan­tial judg­ment debt Ram­jat­tan owed to a third par­ty and his as­so­ci­at­ed le­gal fees. 

In his ap­peal, De­bideen claimed that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad was wrong to make find­ings on the pur­port­ed loan agree­ment and the ex­pla­na­tion of the pur­pose of the funds prof­fered by him. 

The com­pa­ny is rep­re­sent­ed by Jagdeo Singh, Leon Kalicha­ran, and Ka­ri­na Singh, while An­drew Ram­subeik rep­re­sent­ed Ram­jat­tan and his com­pa­ny. De­bideen was rep­re­sent­ed by Tom Richards, KC, Kent Sam­lal, and Umesh Ma­haraj.