Fran­cis Joseph

See­bal­ack Singh, who was fired as chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB) more than six years ago, is still seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for his dis­missal.

Al­though he was grant­ed ju­di­cial re­view by the High Court, the Court of Ap­peal has sent it back to the judge to deal with it as a mat­ter of pri­vate law. Ac­cord­ing to the Court of Ap­peal, the mat­ter will be re­mit­ted to the judge to be con­tin­ued for a de­ter­mi­na­tion whether Singh was wrong­ful­ly dis­missed, and if so, his en­ti­tle­ment to dam­ages. The court com­pris­ing Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, Jus­tice Mar­got Warn­er and Jus­tice Al­lan Men­don­ca or­dered that all the ev­i­dence led in the ju­di­cial re­view mat­ter be ad­mit­ted in­to ev­i­dence in the pri­vate law ac­tion.

El­ton Prescott, SC, and Phillip La­m­ont ap­peared for the ADB, while Sir Fen­ton Ram­sa­hoye, SC, and Anand Ram­lo­gan rep­re­sent­ed Singh. Singh was hired as CEO of the bank on No­vem­ber 11, 2002. But by let­ter dat­ed Jan­u­ary 23, 2003, he was dis­missed by the board of the bank for al­leged­ly ne­glect­ing his du­ties. It was al­leged that he had failed to im­ple­ment the de­ci­sion of the board to in­vest $4.5 mil­lion in a Cli­co Group Ad­vanced Pro­tec­tion con­tract. It was al­so al­leged that he mis­rep­re­sent­ed the bank's in­struc­tions when he sought a le­gal opin­ion by let­ter dat­ed Oc­to­ber 22, 2002. It was fur­ther al­leged that he dis­trib­uted pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial bank in­for­ma­tion by let­ter dat­ed Oc­to­ber 23, 2002, which se­ri­ous­ly com­pro­mised the bank.

Ac­cord­ing to Warn­er, the ques­tion which arose for de­ter­mi­na­tion was whether the chal­lenge to the dis­missal was found­ed in pri­vate law, and not sub­ject to ju­di­cial re­view. Singh is con­tend­ing that the de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate his em­ploy­ment was il­le­gal and ul­tra vires the ADB Act. He claimed that the bank had no au­thor­i­ty to com­pel him to deal with the funds un­der the con­trol of the bank. He con­tend­ed that the bank had no au­thor­i­ty to dis­miss him for his fail­ure and/or re­fusal to en­gage in an il­le­gal ac­tion. Singh claimed that he was de­prived of em­ploy­ment and the ben­e­fits with­out due process of law. He said the de­ci­sion of the bank was ac­tu­at­ed by bad faith for plac­ing an il­le­gal in­vest­ment of $4.5 mil­lion with Cli­co.