Derek Achong

Em­bat­tled Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) fi­nancier Har­ry Ra­goo­nanan has threat­ened to sue Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young for defama­tion.

Ra­goo­nanan’s le­gal team yes­ter­day served Row­ley and Young with pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters in their roles as the par­ty’s po­lit­i­cal leader and pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer, re­spec­tive­ly.

While both let­ters are es­sen­tial­ly based on the same grounds, they per­tain to sep­a­rate com­ments made about the par­ty’s on­go­ing dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings against Ra­goo­nanan for al­leged cor­rup­tion and bribery. Ac­cord­ing to the let­ters, which were ob­tained by the T&T Guardian, Young made the al­leged­ly defam­a­to­ry com­ments af­ter the cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions against Ra­goo­nanan arose in PNM Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing in Oc­to­ber last year.

Row­ley’s al­leged­ly of­fen­sive com­ments were made at a Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) func­tion in Au­gust this year. It dealt with Ra­goo­nanan’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in a press con­fer­ence on the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­cure­ment of the ves­sels for the in­ter-is­land fer­ry ser­vice and the T&T Coast Guard. That press con­fer­ence was host­ed by for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj and mar­itime at­tor­ney Nyree Alphon­so. The com­ments can­not be re­pub­lished as they may be lat­er deemed to be defam­a­to­ry.

In the let­ters, Ra­goo­nanan’s lawyers Mario Mer­ritt, Danielle Ram­per­sad and Ha­sine Shaikh al­leged that the com­ments caused ir­repara­ble dam­age to their client’s per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion.

“By rea­son of such words and/or state­ments, Ra­goo­nanan has been great­ly in­jured in his good name and po­si­tion, brought in­to pub­lic scan­dal and dis­re­pute and held up to con­tempt, ridicule and shame with and among his busi­ness col­leagues, rel­a­tives, friends, ac­quain­tances and cit­i­zens of T&T,” they said.

They al­so claimed that Row­ley and Young in­tend­ed to de­fame him when they made the state­ments.

“The in­tend­ed de­fen­dant un­doubt­ed­ly con­tem­plat­ed and in­tend­ed that the words/state­ments he so said in the pub­lic do­main would be re­port­ed up­on by the news out­lets to the wider cit­i­zen­ry and ul­ti­mate­ly lead to the in­tend­ed claimant’s shame, em­bar­rass­ment, con­tempt, ridicule, odi­um and in­jury to his busi­ness and trad­ing char­ac­ter and rep­u­ta­tion,” the let­ter to Row­ley stat­ed.

Ra­goo­nanan owns sev­er­al busi­ness­es in­clud­ing a restau­rant and bar and a wa­ter park in Rio Claro, which bears his name.

The let­ters stat­ed that Ra­goo­nanan would forego fil­ing law­suits against them if they pub­li­cal­ly apol­o­gise and pay him com­pen­sa­tion for the dam­age to his rep­u­ta­tion. They gave Row­ley and Young 21 days in which to re­spond.

The al­le­ga­tions against Ra­goo­nanan re­late to a record­ed tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion pur­port­ed­ly be­tween him and a Chi­nese busi­ness­man over ob­tain­ing con­tracts from the Pub­lic Trans­porta­tion Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) in 2016.

Ra­goo­nanan, who has re­peat­ed­ly de­nied any wrong­do­ing, has since been sus­pend­ed pend­ing the out­come of the PNM com­mit­tee’s in­quiry in­to the three dis­ci­pli­nary charges lev­elled against him. Hear­ings of the par­ty’s dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee had been ad­journed in the past due to is­sues with Ra­goo­nanan be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by his at­tor­neys at hear­ings.

The lat­est hear­ing was held last month and Ra­goo­nanan re­quest­ed that the con­tro­ver­sial record­ing be dis­closed for his at­tor­neys to pre­pare his de­fence. The com­mit­tee, which is chaired by Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter and Arou­ca/Mal­oney MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, did not im­me­di­ate­ly grant the re­quest as it said it would have to con­sid­er it fur­ther. How­ev­er, the fol­low­ing day, ex­cerpts of the record­ing were ap­par­ent­ly leaked and broad­cast on a ra­dio sta­tion.