For­mer SporTT chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) John Mol­len­thiel has de­nied that his ac­tions led to the loss of $34 mil­lion in the eBeam In­ter­act Lim­it­ed con­tract in the failed Life­S­port pro­gramme.

Mol­len­thiel was cross-ex­am­ined by the state com­pa­ny’s at­tor­ney Col­in Kan­ga­loo as the tri­al con­tin­ued be­fore Jus­tice Ricky Rahim against him and 14 for­mer board mem­bers for breach of fidu­cia­ry du­ty over the con­tract at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain, Wednes­day.

The com­pa­ny claims that its for­mer board act­ed neg­li­gent­ly and reck­less­ly by en­ter­ing the con­tract.

Mol­len­thiel was ques­tioned by Kan­ga­loo on a se­ries of email ex­changes, let­ters, doc­u­ments, and oth­er cor­re­spon­dence.

He de­nied that he was neg­li­gent in mak­ing or caus­ing to be made the con­tract with eBeam or that he had not re­ceived in­struc­tions from the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs.

Kan­ga­loo said, “I put it to you that the claimant has suf­fered loss in the sum of $34 mil­lion as a re­sult of your ac­tions.” Mol­len­thiel replied, “I dis­agree.”

He said he re­ceived a Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for Sole Se­lect with two pro­pos­als from eBeam In­ter­act, in­clud­ing a tech­nol­o­gy pro­pos­al and the nu­mer­a­cy and lit­er­a­cy pro­pos­al, but nev­er saw any eval­u­a­tion of the pro­pos­als from the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs and did not think it was nec­es­sary to ask for them. 

How­ev­er, he said he sub­se­quent­ly re­quest­ed an eval­u­a­tion from the com­pa­ny af­ter the sec­ond pay­ment of $17 mil­lion.

Told by Kan­ga­loo that the re­quest for an eval­u­a­tion was made af­ter ques­tions were be­ing asked about the con­tract, he said, “There were ques­tions be­ing asked about the re­la­tion­ship and the progress and the work done.” Asked if he knew the au­thor of the Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for Sole Se­lect, he said he did not ask the name as it came from a di­rec­tor of Mon­i­tor and Eval­u­a­tion at the Sports Com­pa­ny who was al­so a mem­ber of the Life­S­port Im­ple­ment­ing Com­mit­tee, and it came to him through the PS, so he con­sid­ered it an of­fi­cial doc­u­ment from the Min­istry of Sport.

Kan­ga­loo claimed there were “sig­nif­i­cant” er­rors in Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for Sole Se­lect, but Mol­len­thiel dis­agreed with him.

Mollineau agreed that he had rec­om­mend­ed that they utilise the ser­vices of eBeam as the sole se­lect pre­ferred sup­pli­er to pro­vide ser­vice so­lu­tions to the Min­istry of Sport for the Life­s­port ed­u­ca­tion­al and tech­no­log­i­cal mod­ules.

Mol­len­thiel said SporTT was par­ty to the agree­ment with eBeam and was re­quired to pay the sums, but the Min­istry of Sport had main­tained con­trol of the Life­s­port pro­gram and eBeam en­gage­ment. 

Asked if he thought it was un­usu­al that the Min­istry would re­move its name from the let­ter of award, “I can’t say that it was un­usu­al; this whole eBeam en­gage­ment was un­prece­dent­ed to us, what­ev­er I re­ceived from the PS and the Min­istry of Sport I took.”

The pro­posed fi­nal draft con­tract was dat­ed June 5, 2013, but Mol­len­thiel ad­mit­ted he had back­dat­ed it to De­cem­ber 6, 2012. “I used the date that PS used for the same let­ter of the award,” he said. 

Mol­len­thiel ad­mit­ted that the fi­nal ver­sion of the con­tract for $34 mil­lion was not put be­fore the board be­fore be­ing ex­e­cut­ed. 

Read­ing from an ex­change of re­spons­es from the then Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary Dawn Mo­han, Kan­ga­loo sug­gest­ed to him that he ig­nore is­sues she had raised with the con­tract. “I do not agree,” he said.

He ac­cept­ed that in the fi­nal con­tract, no scope of ser­vices was in­clud­ed, which made it dif­fi­cult to clear­ly iden­ti­fy what ser­vices eBeam was re­quired to pro­vide. How­ev­er, he de­nied that he had sug­gest­ed that the con­tract be kept “loose.”

He de­nied Kan­ga­loo’s sug­ges­tions that he breached his du­ties when he knew and should have known that the con­tract was in the best in­ter­est of Sport TT and failed to heed Mo­han’s ad­vice in re­la­tion to her con­cerns about the con­tract.

Mol­len­thiel al­so said he did not think it was nec­es­sary to get board ap­proval for the first pay­ment of $17 mil­lion and agreed that there were con­cerns with eBeam’s per­for­mance. 

Asked if there were con­cerns that eBeam did not per­form its oblig­a­tions un­der the con­tract, Mol­len­thiel dis­agreed. He said there were con­cerns about cer­tain as­pects of eBeam’s per­for­mance, and they had at­tempt­ed to rene­go­ti­ate the con­tract so that they could have bet­ter man­age­ment con­trol of the pro­gram and the use of funds. 

He said eBeam re­ceived the sec­ond check for $17 mil­lion with a promise to de­liv­er a pre­sen­ta­tion, but that didn’t ma­te­ri­alise.

The de­fen­dants in the mat­ter are Mol­len­thiel and ex-di­rec­tors Padding­ton, Chela Lam­see-Ebanks, Bala, Nor­ris Blanc, Nisa Dass, Anyl Gopeesingh, Sabre­nah Khayyam, Mar­tin, Matthew Quam­i­na, An­nan Ram­nanans­ingh, Kent Sam­lal, Harnar­ine Seer­am Singh, and Mil­ton Si­boo. 

Mol­len­thiel’s cross-ex­am­i­na­tion will con­tin­ue to­day.

On Au­gust 22, High Court Judge Eleanor Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well re­ject­ed SporTT’s breach of con­tract case against eBeam but or­dered it to pay $30 mil­lion in resti­tu­tion as she ruled that it was un­just­ly en­riched for ser­vices it did not pro­vide.

While SporTT was seek­ing the en­tire val­ue of the con­tract, Jus­tice Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well de­duct­ed $4 mil­lion, which rep­re­sent­ed the nom­i­nal ser­vices in­clu­sive of the pro­cure­ment of equip­ment pro­vid­ed by eBeam. 

“It would be legal­ly un­just for the de­fen­dant to re­tain the ben­e­fit of $34 mil­lion when on­ly the min­i­mum val­ue, un­re­lat­ed to any sub­stan­tial de­liv­ery of the bar­gained-for ser­vices, was re­ceived by the claimant un­der the con­tract,” Jus­tice Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well said. 

“The min­i­mal ser­vices pro­vid­ed by the de­fen­dant did not mean­ing­ful­ly meet the ben­e­fit that was in­tend­ed by the par­ties to be de­liv­ered to the claimant,” she added. 

eBeam still has the op­tion to ap­peal the out­come. 

SporTT has con­tend­ed that the case against eBeam has no bear­ing on the par­al­lel lit­i­ga­tion against the group. 

The de­fen­dants are ex­pect­ed to be­gin to take the wit­ness stand and be cross-ex­am­ined when the case con­tin­ues next week.

John Lee and Stephanie Moe are al­so rep­re­sent­ing SporTT. 

The group’s lawyers in­clude Fyard Ho­sein, SC, An­tho­ny Vieira, SC, Rishi Dass, SC, Jagdeo Singh, Ka­ri­na Singh, Ke­ston Lewis, Roger Kawals­ingh, Ravi Mungals­ingh, Tara Bhar­ios­ingh, Nicole de Ver­teuil-Milne, Adri­an Ra­moutar, Sush­ma Gopeesingh, Kami­ni Per­saud-Maraj, Neal Bis­nath, Ly­dia Men­don­ca, Richard Ja­gai, An­drea Bhag­wan­deen, and Dhar­men­dra Pun­wassee.