Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Two busi­ness­es owned by To­ba­go busi­ness mag­nate Al­lan Warn­er have lodged a fi­nal ap­peal over the re­fusal of the lo­cal courts to grant an in­junc­tion over the re­lease of heavy equip­ment and a prop­er­ty that was seized by the po­lice as part of an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to their min­ing op­er­a­tion.

A no­tice is­sued on the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil’s web­site yes­ter­day in­di­cat­ed that Warns Quar­ry Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed and Pres-T-Con 2021 Lim­it­ed had ap­plied for per­mis­sion to ap­peal pre­lim­i­nary rul­ings de­liv­ered by a High Court Judge and the Court of Ap­peal.

Last year, the two com­pa­nies, sev­er­al oth­ers owned by Warn­er, his son Aluko, a group of em­ploy­ees and in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tors filed a law­suit con­tend­ing that an on­go­ing po­lice probe, which re­sult­ed in the in­di­vid­u­als and Warn­er be­ing charged with en­gag­ing in il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, was un­law­ful and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

The claimants in the case were Warns Quar­ry Com­pa­ny Ltd, Warn­er Con­struc­tion and San­i­ta­tion Ltd, In­ez In­vest­ments Ltd, Pres-T-Con 2021 Ltd, All­crete Ltd, Warn­er’s son Aluko, em­ploy­ees Robert Wil­son, Ricky Joseph, Corey Charles, Ki­mal Williams, Will­insque To­bias, and Shas­tri Mad­hoo and in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tors Rueben Mapran­gala, De­on George, Rudy Sa­hai, Aaron Nep­tune, and Ah­meed David.

Through an as­so­ci­at­ed in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion, they were seek­ing the re­turn of heavy equip­ment, tools and com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­vices that were seized by po­lice of­fi­cers dur­ing raids in De­cem­ber 2023, and in May last year, as well as the re­lease of a 16.67-hectare par­cel of land in Waller­field that was com­man­deered by the po­lice as part of their probe.

They were al­so seek­ing the re­lease of a large quan­ti­ty of orig­i­nal doc­u­ments that were seized from their of­fices.

In the law­suit, the group’s lawyers not­ed that Pres-T-Con ob­tained a 25-year lease from a com­pa­ny for the Waller­field prop­er­ty in Jan­u­ary 2022.

Pres-T-Con grant­ed per­mis­sion to Warns Quar­ry to oc­cu­py the prop­er­ty and the lat­ter was grant­ed a li­cence from the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands on May 20, last year.

They not­ed that on June 18, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries grant­ed Warns Quar­ry a con­di­tion­al au­tho­ri­sa­tion to un­der­take min­er­al pro­cess­ing at the prop­er­ty un­til the end of this year.

Warn­er, his son, and sev­en em­ploy­ees and as­so­ciates were charged with pro­cess­ing ag­gre­gate with­out a li­cence un­der Sec­tion 45(1)(a) of the Min­er­als Act.

The group, which has de­nied any wrong­do­ing, faces a $200,000 fine and im­pris­on­ment for two years if they are even­tu­al­ly con­vict­ed.

In Sep­tem­ber, last year, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad dis­missed the in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion.

Sev­er­al months lat­er, Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed and Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar re­ject­ed an ap­peal from the group al­leg­ing that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad erred in his de­ci­sion.

Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar ruled that his col­league cor­rect­ly found that the com­pa­nies and in­di­vid­u­als had an ar­guable case to take to tri­al and that they could be even­tu­al­ly com­pen­sat­ed if they were even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful.

He al­so agreed that the in­junc­tion would not pre­vent fur­ther rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age as claimed by the com­pa­nies and in­di­vid­u­als.

Stat­ing that they had al­ready tak­en le­gal ac­tion for defama­tion against a news­pa­per, which re­port­ed on the probe, Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar said: “Rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age can­not be un­done.”

Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar al­so not­ed that the par­ties could not claim that their con­sti­tu­tion­al right to the en­joy­ment of their prop­er­ty was in­fringed as the po­lice did not block their ac­cess to their prop­er­ty while at the quar­ry to pre­serve ev­i­dence.

He al­so point­ed out that the po­lice va­cat­ed the lo­ca­tion two days af­ter the in­junc­tion was re­fused.

“The sit­u­a­tion with the re­al prop­er­ty no longer ex­ists,” he said.

Last­ly, Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar re­ject­ed claims that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad could be per­ceived to be bi­ased based on a ser­mon he de­liv­ered to a church con­gre­ga­tion al­most a year be­fore he con­sid­ered the in­junc­tion.