DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

For­mer Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran has again emerged vic­to­ri­ous in his le­gal bat­tle over be­ing wrong­ful­ly dis­missed by the Gov­ern­ment in De­cem­ber 2015.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment a short while ago, Ap­pel­late Judges Nolan Bereaux, Mark Mo­hammed, and Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar dis­missed an ap­peal from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al chal­leng­ing a de­ci­sion by High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad to up­hold Ram­bar­ran's case and or­der over $5.47 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion in 2022.

It was a ma­jor­i­ty judg­ment with Jus­tices Bereaux and Mo­hammed agree­ing and Jus­tice Ra­jku­mar pro­vid­ing a dif­fer­ent opin­ion.

Giv­ing a syn­op­sis of their judg­ment, Jus­tice Bereaux not­ed that he and Jus­tice Mo­hammed agreed that their col­league's find­ings in the case could not be fault­ed.

The out­come was not a to­tal suc­cess for Ram­bar­ran as the ma­jor­i­ty re­ject­ed his counter ap­peal sug­gest­ing that he should have re­ceived more com­pen­sa­tion.

In­stead, Jus­tices Bereaux and Mo­hammed ruled that he should have re­ceived less. They said Jus­tice Ram­per­sad was wrong to or­der $175,000 in vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages and that Ram­bar­ran be paid his per­for­mance bonus­es for the two re­main­ing years of his con­tract.

The ap­peal pan­el agreed to a two week stay of the judg­ment to give the AG's Of­fice time to con­sid­er it (the judg­ment) and de­cide whether to lodge a fi­nal ap­peal to the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil.

Ram­bar­ran's lawyer Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, in­di­cat­ed that he would not op­pose an ur­gent fi­nal ap­peal.

Ram­bar­ran was ap­point­ed Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor in Ju­ly 2012, and his con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed by Cab­i­net on the ad­vice of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in De­cem­ber 2015.

The de­ci­sion came short­ly af­ter Ram­bar­ran an­nounced that T&T was in a re­ces­sion and af­ter he re­vealed the biggest for­eign ex­change users in the coun­try.

In his con­sti­tu­tion­al claim, he con­tend­ed that the gov­ern­ment un­law­ful­ly re­voked his ap­point­ment in breach of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad ruled that his ter­mi­na­tion was "se­ri­ous­ly flawed" and his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to pro­tec­tion of the law and to a fair hear­ing in ac­cor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of fun­da­men­tal jus­tice were breached.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad ruled that if there were con­cerns that Ram­bar­ran's al­leged con­duct was in breach of as­pects of the Cen­tral Bank Act and Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act, both had pro­vi­sions for crim­i­nal charges to be laid, which Ram­bar­ran would have had to de­fend be­fore a mag­is­trate.

"Par­lia­ment in­tend­ed that if there was a breach of ei­ther of the Acts that there was a rem­e­dy to deal with that breach," he said, as he not­ed that Im­bert did not re­veal the full rea­sons for his rec­om­men­da­tion.

As part of his claim, Ram­bar­ran was seek­ing ad­di­tion­al com­pen­sa­tion for los­ing out on a po­si­tion as a Se­nior Ad­vi­sor to the G-24 Sec­re­tari­at based in Wash­ing­ton DC.

While Jus­tice Ram­per­sad ruled that Im­bert act­ed un­fair­ly when he for­ward­ed the press re­lease over the re­vo­ca­tion of Ram­bar­ran's ap­point­ment to the G-24 of­fi­cial re­cruit­ing him, he not­ed that Ram­bar­ran was not en­ti­tled to ad­di­tion­al com­pen­sa­tion as he ap­plied for the post dur­ing the pe­ri­od he will be com­pen­sat­ed for based on the law­suit.

Al­though Ram­bar­ran was seek­ing sig­nif­i­cant vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages as he claimed that he suf­fered psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fects over what tran­spired, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad on­ly or­dered a $175,000 pay­ment, as he not­ed that his (Ram­bar­ran’s) med­ical ex­pert could not prove that the con­di­tion she treat­ed in 2016 was di­rect­ly caused by such.