For­mer To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) chief sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis has blast­ed the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion af­ter the High Court up­held an $18 mil­lion judg­ment against the THA in favour of Nazvic Con­trac­tors Lim­it­ed.

Call­ing the sit­u­a­tion a de­lib­er­ate act of “wicked­ness and vin­dic­tive­ness,” Den­nis square­ly blamed Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, ac­cus­ing him of us­ing false cor­rup­tion claims to black­list To­ba­go con­trac­tors while favour­ing com­pa­nies from Trinidad.

He said, “The his­tor­i­cal facts will demon­strate that there has been a con­stant and de­lib­er­ate at­tack on To­ba­go con­trac­tors since this ad­min­is­tra­tion got in­to of­fice. It start­ed with friv­o­lous and base­less claims of cor­rup­tion and shod­dy work and pay­ment for works that were nev­er done, none of which have been proven thus far.”

The rul­ing fol­lowed the THA’s fail­ure to prop­er­ly de­fend against a breach of con­tract law­suit over un­paid fees. The court dis­missed the THA’s at­tempt to over­turn the de­fault judg­ment, re­in­forc­ing the claim that the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s re­fusal to pay was un­jus­ti­fied.

The Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor said this rul­ing added to the “moun­tain” of le­gal de­feats, ref­er­enc­ing the three in­junc­tions against the Friend­ship Road con­nec­tor project—one by the EMA, an­oth­er by Hearns, and the lat­est by the own­er of Klig­win Es­tate—as well as the le­gal bat­tle the THA lost against the for­mer THA Tourism Sec­re­tary for the zi­pline project, and now this con­trac­tor.

He added, “I want to say as well that I ex­pect there to be sev­er­al oth­er cas­es be­fore the court, sim­i­lar cas­es, and al­so ex­pect that the court will rule, sim­i­lar­ly, be­cause there is no ev­i­dence to sup­port the base­less claims of cor­rup­tion.”

He wel­comed the court rul­ing, say­ing it proved the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ac­tions could not stand up to le­gal scruti­ny. Den­nis’ next ques­tion is the le­gal bill the THA has in­curred fol­low­ing an­oth­er le­gal de­feat.

“There is a moun­tain of le­gal bills with all these friv­o­lous cas­es, vic­tim­is­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans, and it’s the tax­pay­ers now (who) must bear re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for that un­nec­es­sary ex­pen­di­ture.”

— Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les