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Wednesday, January 22, 2025

SPORTT vs BOARD DIRECTORS COURT MATTER

Reckless and incompetent – Attorney Kangaloo 

by

DEREK ACHONG
133 days ago
20240911
Senior Counsel Colin Kangaloo

Senior Counsel Colin Kangaloo

“Reck­less and in­com­pe­tent” - these were the words used by Se­nior Coun­sel Col­in Kan­ga­loo to de­scribe the ac­tions of the for­mer board mem­bers and ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers of the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T Lim­it­ed (SporTT) in en­ter­ing a failed $34 mil­lion con­tract re­lat­ed to the con­tro­ver­sial Life Sport pro­gramme. 

Kan­ga­loo, who leads the le­gal team for the state com­pa­ny, made the com­ments while open­ing his client’s case against the group for breach of their fidu­cia­ry du­ty be­fore Jus­tice Ricky Rahim at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. 

He said, “It can’t be that they act­ed rea­son­ably and hon­est­ly. They act­ed reck­less­ly, bor­der­ing on in­com­pe­tence.” 

Kan­ga­loo claimed that cor­re­spon­dence from the Min­istry of Sport in De­cem­ber 2012, which ad­vised that eBeam In­ter­act Lim­it­ed had been cho­sen by sole se­lect ten­der to ad­min­is­ter the nu­mer­a­cy and lit­er­a­cy, and the in­ter­ac­tive tech­nol­o­gy com­po­nents of the oc­cu­pa­tion­al skills train­ing as­pect of the pro­gram, was “rid­dled with ap­par­ent er­rors.”.

Kan­ga­loo said, “They all sat around and did noth­ing with the ex­cep­tion of board mem­ber Matthew Quam­i­na.” 

How­ev­er, he claimed that Quam­i­na’s in­ter­ven­tion was not enough to ab­solve him of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the con­tract. 

“The two ques­tions he asked were not enough and could not ex­cuse him from his statu­to­ry du­ties,” he said. 

He fur­ther claimed that none of the di­rec­tors saw the con­tract when it was even­tu­al­ly signed in Ju­ly 2013 and eBeam was paid half of the val­ue. 

“Re­mark­ably no­body asked ques­tions about the con­tract like the de­liv­er­ables or how they could be ex­posed,” Kan­ga­loo said. 

Kan­ga­loo re­ject­ed the group’s claim that they on­ly paid eBeam the bal­ance on the con­tract af­ter seek­ing le­gal ad­vice in De­cem­ber 2013. 

“They can’t be pro­tect­ed as if they ex­er­cised prop­er due dili­gence; they would have nev­er en­tered in­to the con­tract in the first place,” Kan­ga­loo said. 

“We say they are neg­li­gent,” he added. 

He al­so con­tend­ed that the group mem­bers could not claim that they were act­ing on the in­struc­tions of the min­istry as they en­tered in­to the con­tract on the com­pa­ny’s be­half.

“The com­mer­cial re­al­i­ty is that is not so,” he said. 

Dur­ing the hear­ing, at­tor­ney Jagdeo Singh, who is rep­re­sent­ing sev­er­al mem­bers of the group, in­ter­ro­gat­ed cur­rent SporTT cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Ar­lene George. 

George ad­mit­ted that be­fore the case was filed un­der her tenure, she did not in­ter­view of­fi­cials of the min­istry who were as­signed to the pro­gramme. 

“I re­lied on the re­lat­ed doc­u­ments,” she said. 

Asked whether she checked if the min­istry or the pro­gramme’s sec­re­tari­at had ad­di­tion­al doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to the con­tract, George said no. 

“I had no ba­sis to be­lieve SporTT did not have ac­cu­rate records,” she said. 

George ad­mit­ted that the com­pa­ny did not pay for the con­tract with its an­nu­al sub­ven­tion but rather through a $400 mil­lion loan fa­cil­i­ty that was even­tu­al­ly re­paid. 

Re­fer­ring to the State En­ter­prise Per­for­mance Man­u­al, Singh point­ed out that the Min­istry of Fi­nance and Sport Min­istry would have ap­proved the con­tract. 

George al­so ac­cept­ed that un­der the com­pa­ny’s bye-laws it was re­quired to take di­rec­tions from both min­istries in the pub­lic in­ter­est. 

She al­so ad­mit­ted that there was no ev­i­dence that the mem­bers of the group had a con­flict of in­ter­est in the con­tract or ben­e­fit­ted fi­nan­cial­ly from it. 

The de­fen­dants in the case are for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer John Mol­len­thiel, Se­bas­t­ian Padding­ton, Chela Lam­see-Ebanks, Reynold Bala, Nor­ris Blanc, Nisa Dass, Anyl Gopeesingh, Sabre­nah Khayyam, Cheemat­tee Mar­tin, Quam­i­na, An­nan Ram­nanans­ingh, Kent Sam­lal, Harnar­ine Seer­am Singh, and Mil­ton Si­boo. 

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.

John Lee and Stephanie Moe are ap­pear­ing along­side Kan­ga­loo for SporTT. 

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

The tri­al con­tin­ues to­day. 


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