Em­bat­tled for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress mem­ber Ken Em­rith is mount­ing High Court ac­tion against the Ex­press news­pa­pers con­cern­ing an April 24 sto­ry about him.

Em­rith's at­tor­ney Lar­ry Lal­la no­ti­fied the news­pa­per of the ac­tion via a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter on Wednes­day.

The news­pa­per made al­le­ga­tions about Em­rith three weeks ago aris­ing from the Pana­ma Pa­pers fi­as­co. That pack­age in­volved leaked doc­u­ments from the law firm of Mos­sack Fon­se­ca on many per­son­al­i­ties, in­clud­ing busi­ness­peo­ple, world­wide.

Con­cern­ing the sto­ry at hand, Lal­la said Em­rith is seek­ing dam­ages for li­bel, an in­junc­tion to re­strain the news­pa­per from fur­ther pub­lish­ing the said or any sim­i­lar li­bel about Em­rith, plus costs. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, Em­rith is seek­ing an apol­o­gy and an un­der­tak­ing not to re­peat the al­le­ga­tions, dam­ages and costs.

Lal­la's said his let­ter to the Ex­press was a re­sponse to a "scathing, un­found­ed and high­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble at­tack con­tained in the ar­ti­cle." He said Em­rith was brought in­to odi­um, dis­re­pute and his rep­u­ta­tion suf­fered ir­repara­ble dam­age, adding his safe­ty as well as that of his fam­i­ly has al­so been af­fect­ed.

The let­ter stat­ed Em­rith was "for many years a busi­ness strate­gic con­sul­tant to sev­er­al lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies" and be­tween 2003 and 2010, the CEO of the Con­ca­caf Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence. It stat­ed that be­tween 1996 and 2003 he was al­so the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the School Nu­tri­tion Pro­gramme with an av­er­age an­nu­al bud­get of $107 mil­lion and spear­head­ed and de­vel­oped a strate­gic plan for the pro­gramme along with the Min­istry of Fi­nance to pro­vide dai­ly lunch­es to un­der­priv­i­leged chil­dren.

It al­so ad­dressed claims in the Sun­day sto­ry against Em­rith stat­ing:

�2 The busi­ness trans­ac­tion con­cerned was not a "back­room deal" nor did it con­sti­tute an act of "ex­plo­sive bribery" per­formed by a "shady func­tionary".

�2 Em­rith was at all ma­te­r­i­al times le­git­i­mate­ly and prop­er­ly en­gaged by Grup­po Cam­pari to pro­vide pro­fes­sion­al con­sult­ing ser­vices to fa­cil­i­tate a US$495 mil­lion-dol­lar in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness trans­ac­tion.

�2 The al­leged "US$2.5 mil­lion kick­back" fee rep­re­sents the pay­ment prop­er­ly and fair­ly for con­sul­ta­tion ser­vices in ac­cor­dance with the terms of his en­gage­ment.

Mean­while, Em­rith was al­so men­tioned in an April 27 Mi­a­mi Her­ald sto­ry con­cern­ing more Pana­ma Pa­pers rev­e­la­tions, this time in­volv­ing al­le­ga­tions that a Hait­ian In­vest­ment Cen­tre of­fi­cial –Georges Rene–lob­bied for a pro­pos­al to forge a pe­tro­le­um deal with T&T and set up off­shore en­ti­ties that could cash in on the pe­tro­le­um deal.

The Her­ald claimed a Hait­ian del­e­ga­tion vis­it­ed Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing in T&T to dis­cuss a pos­si­ble deal for pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts.

The ar­ti­cle al­leged a Pana­man­ian shell com­pa­ny called Pen­drey As­so­ciates was al­so in­volved. How­ev­er, the ar­ti­cle stat­ed the al­leged "oil deal be­tween Trinidad and Haiti fiz­zled". (GA)