Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jack Warn­er scored a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar vic­to­ry last week when he won a $28.1 mil­lion law­suit filed against him by UNC fi­nancier Kr­ish­na Lal­la. It was dur­ing the lead up to the May 20 gen­er­al elec­tion, Lal­la, trad­ing as Re­al Time Sys­tems Ltd, filed the law­suit in the Port-of-Spain High Court claim­ing re­pay­ment of $13,351,095 for a loan giv­en to Warn­er pri­or to the No­vem­ber 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion. The law­suit named the de­fen­dants as-Ren­raw In­vest­ments Ltd, CCAM and Com­pa­ny Ltd, and Warn­er, trad­ing as the Dr Joao Have­lange Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence. Lal­la con­tend­ed that the mon­ey was loaned to Warn­er, who is al­so the UNC chair­man dur­ing the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 9 to No­vem­ber 1, 2007 at an in­ter­est rate of 12 per cent.

Warn­er was rep­re­sent­ed by William Mc­Com­mick, QC, Om Lal­la, and Dereck Bal­li­ram. At­tor­neys Neal Bis­nath and Ly­dia Men­don­ca ap­peared for Lal­la. The case nev­er went to the full tri­al. Warn­er's le­gal team chal­lenged the state­ment of case and pre­lim­i­nary sub­mis­sions were made. Jus­tice De­van Ram­per­sad struck out the state­ment of case, and dis­missed Lal­la's ap­pli­ca­tion for sum­ma­ry judg­ment. Both par­ties are ex­pect­ed to make sub­mis­sions to the court by De­cem­ber 9, fol­low­ing which Jus­tice Ram­per­sad will de­liv­er his rul­ing on De­cem­ber 14.

Com­ment­ing on his vic­to­ry yes­ter­day, Warn­er said: "I knew for some time Mr Bas­deo Pan­day and Mr Lal­la would have been try­ing to im­pli­cate me in this for some time. I knew I would have been vin­di­cat­ed and I al­lowed jus­tice to run its course. There are one or two oth­er per­sons who are mak­ing a sim­i­lar ac­tion but they would meet a sim­i­lar fate." Warn­er, who said he was "hum­bled" by the de­vel­op­ment added: "I am a vic­tim of nu­mer­ous blog­gers all of whom have rea­sons known to them and are wish­ing me evil but I fear no one as long as jus­tice in this coun­try runs its course."