Gen­er­al Man­ag­er and CEO of CEPEP Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, Kei­th Ed­dy, has is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to PNM Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi over al­leged defama­tion, de­mand­ing a pub­lic apol­o­gy, with­draw­al of al­le­ga­tions, and com­pen­sa­tion.

The let­ter, sent by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan’s Free­dom Cham­bers, seeks ag­gra­vat­ed and ex­em­plary dam­ages, claim­ing Al-Rawi made “ma­li­cious, false, base­less and dam­ag­ing state­ments” about Ed­dy. Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, the al­leged defam­a­to­ry re­marks were made at a Ju­ly 29 Op­po­si­tion press con­fer­ence, in an Au­gust 7 me­dia re­lease fol­low­ing Jus­tice Mar­garet Mo­hammed’s rul­ing in East­man En­ter­prise Lim­it­ed v CEPEP Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, at an Au­gust 12 PNM pub­lic meet­ing in Pleas­antville, and in an Au­gust 13 Guardian News­pa­pers ar­ti­cle.

The law firm out­lined eight grounds for defama­tion, in­clud­ing claims that Al-Rawi ac­cused Ed­dy of ma­te­r­i­al non-dis­clo­sure in the East­man case, per­vert­ing the course of jus­tice, and crim­i­nal con­duct. Free­dom Cham­bers de­mand­ed an un­qual­i­fied pub­lic apol­o­gy, with­draw­al of all al­le­ga­tions, an un­der­tak­ing not to re­peat them, ad­mis­sion of li­a­bil­i­ty, court as­sess­ment of dam­ages, and in­dem­ni­fi­ca­tion of Ed­dy’s le­gal costs. Al-Rawi has 14 days to re­spond or face High Court pro­ceed­ings.

At­tor­ney Aasha Ram­lal, writ­ing on be­half of Ed­dy, de­scribed the re­marks as part of a “care­ful­ly or­ches­trat­ed po­lit­i­cal smear cam­paign and char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion” to dis­tract from the al­leged fraud­u­lent ex­ten­sion of CEPEP con­tracts be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion.

It fur­ther stat­ed Al-Rawi made no at­tempt to ver­i­fy the al­le­ga­tions, and de­lib­er­ate­ly sought to “jeop­ar­dise, ma­lign and im­pugn” Ed­dy’s char­ac­ter.

Al-Rawi did not re­spond to re­quests for com­ment.