This coun­try’s high­est court has ruled that there may have been a ba­sis to sup­port claims that there was po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the de­ci­sion to with­draw a US$97m law­suit against for­mer Petrotrin ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Mal­colm Jones.

The Gov­ern­ment had said the de­ci­sion to drop the case was sup­port­ed by the le­gal opin­ion of British Queen’s Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son, now the State’s key wit­ness against for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and for­mer UNC sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen.

In a judge­ment de­liv­ered at the Unit­ed King­dom’s Supreme Court in Lon­don on Mon­day, five Law Lords of the Privy Coun­cil ruled that the lo­cal courts were wrong to dis­miss UNC ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj’s law­suit which sought the dis­clo­sure of doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to Petrotrin’s failed bil­lion-dol­lar World Gas-to-Liq­uids (GTL) plant deal. Ma­haraj, in a state­ment, ded­i­cat­ed his vic­to­ry to the for­mer work­ers of Petrotrin who were ter­mi­nat­ed last year af­ter the com­pa­ny was closed.

As part of the judge­ment, Lord Phillip Sales said that the ev­i­dence in the claim sug­gest­ed that there may have been “some grounds for think­ing” that there was po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in drop­ping the case against Jones.

The Privy Coun­cil al­so re­ferred to state­ments at­trib­uted to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi which were made ahead of Nel­son’s ad­vice which gave the “ap­pear­ance of in­volve­ment of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in tak­ing that de­ci­sion.”

Jones died in Au­gust 2017 af­ter a civ­il claim, ini­ti­at­ed by Ram­lo­gan un­der the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion, was ter­mi­nat­ed.

In ear­ly 2016, Nel­son ad­vised the then Petrotrin board that the case had to be dis­con­tin­ued as state­ments of two key wit­ness­es showed that the deal was a bad busi­ness de­ci­sion and not based on neg­li­gence.

Last month, Nel­son was charged along­side Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen over a State le­gal fee kick­back con­spir­a­cy.

Nel­son has signed a plea agree­ment with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) to plead guilty to the charges and tes­ti­fy against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen.

In the case be­fore the Privy Coun­cil, the UNC ac­tivist was es­sen­tial­ly grant­ed a life­line in his bid to ex­pose the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion’s rea­son for dis­con­tin­u­ing the law­suit against Jones.

On Au­gust 4, 2017, Jones, 74, passed away at Petrotrin’s Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal in Pointe-a-Pierre.

The de­ci­sion means that Ma­haraj can now con­tin­ue to pur­sue his law­suit seek­ing dis­clo­sure be­fore a new High Court Judge. It does not guar­an­tee that he would be even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful in his claim.

Sales, who wrote the 15-page judge­ment, stat­ed that Ma­haraj had a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess in prov­ing that there was a strong pub­lic in­ter­est in dis­clos­ing the doc­u­ments, which Ma­haraj were seek­ing would nor­mal­ly be con­sid­ered ex­empt un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act.

The doc­u­ments were the wit­ness state­ments of for­mer Petrotrin ex­ec­u­tives Char­maine Bap­tiste and An­tho­ny Chan Tack. They were vi­tal in the com­pa­ny’s ar­bi­tra­tion against World GTL over the failed deal.

Bap­tiste and Chan Tack’s state­ments were be­ing sought as they were the cat­a­lyst for the de­ci­sion to with­draw Petrotrin’s law­suit against Jones.

The Privy Coun­cil said it was in the pub­lic in­ter­est to dis­close the state­ments as it “con­sid­ers that it is ar­guable that they are of sig­nif­i­cant weight, with a view to se­cur­ing trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in re­la­tion to rel­e­vant de­ci­sions in a num­ber of re­spects.”

The court held that the even­tu­al dis­clo­sure of the con­tentious state­ments would help the pub­lic form their own views on Jones’ con­duct in the World GTL deal and on Petrotrin’s han­dling of its sub­se­quent case against him.

Ma­haraj was rep­re­sent­ed by Richard Clay­ton, QC, Ram­lo­gan, Christo­pher Knight, Chelsea Stew­art and Alvin Pariags­ingh. Petrotrin was rep­re­sent­ed by Thomas Roe, QC, and Do­minique Mar­tineau.

About the World GTL Deal

In 2005, Petrotrin and World GTL en­tered in­to a joint ven­ture to build, fi­nance and op­er­ate a gas-to-liq­uids plant in Trinidad. The $2.7 bil­lion fa­cil­i­ty was sup­posed to con­vert nat­ur­al gas in­to a more ozone-friend­ly liq­ue­fied form of diesel.

Al­though part of the struc­ture of the plant was com­plet­ed, it re­mained non-func­tion­al due to lack of ap­pro­pri­ate tech­nol­o­gy. There were al­so is­sues with con­struc­tion de­lays and ex­ten­sive cost over­runs.

Petrotrin ini­ti­at­ed ar­bi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings against the plant’s for­mer own­er in the In­ter­na­tion­al Cham­ber of Com­merce and it even­tu­al­ly won. How­ev­er, the ar­bi­tra­tion award is yet to be paid.

World GTL ini­ti­at­ed its own ar­bi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings at Lon­don Court of In­ter­na­tion­al Ar­bi­tra­tion, which was al­so won by Petrotrin.