Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is not view­ing the re­cent Court of Ap­peal de­ci­sion in favour of for­mer Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran as a loss.

He said the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al will de­cide whether or not to ap­peal the de­ci­sion at the Privy Coun­cil.

On Tues­day, the court 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.

This stemmed from a le­gal bat­tle ini­ti­at­ed by Ram­bar­ran who ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of wrong­ful dis­missal on the ad­vice of Im­bert in De­cem­ber 2015.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the sod-turn­ing for a new Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion head of­fice in St Clair, Im­bert point­ed to para­graphs 94 and 101 of the Ap­peal Court’s judg­ment.

“You’ll see in 94 what the ma­jor­i­ty pan­el said was that the for­mer gov­er­nor brought a lot of these trou­bles on him­self be­cause it was a pro­ce­dur­al is­sue, a pro­ce­dur­al breach. But when you look at the mer­its of the thing, what the courts said was that the al­le­ga­tions were well found­ed,” Im­bert ex­plained.

Para­graph 94 said, “While I ac­cept that the cir­cum­stances of the ter­mi­na­tion did cause the re­spon­dent a more than de min­imis lev­el of emo­tion­al dis­tress and in­con­ve­nience, the dif­fi­cul­ty I have in this as­sess­ment is that the breach in this case is a pro­ce­dur­al breach. The re­spon­dent was not heard pri­or to his ter­mi­na­tion. The mer­its of the al­le­ga­tions against him which ul­ti­mate­ly brought his down­fall have not been pro­nounced up­on. He has not been vin­di­cat­ed on the mer­its. On the face of it, the al­le­ga­tions ap­pear to be well-found­ed. To that ex­tent, the re­spon­dent can al­so blame him­self for the men­tal an­guish he has suf­fered. I am not sat­is­fied that he is en­ti­tled to any up­lift for what is a breach of pro­ce­dure in re­gard to the pro­bity of well-found­ed al­le­ga­tions against him.”

Im­bert al­so point­ed to para­graph 101 which spoke to al­le­ga­tions that he in­ten­tion­al­ly at­tempt­ed to block Ram­bar­ran from re­ceiv­ing em­ploy­ment as a se­nior ad­vi­sor to the G-24 Sec­re­tari­at based in Wash­ing­ton, DC, Unit­ed States.

Para­graph 101 said, “The judge erred. In the email of 21st No­vem­ber 2016, Min­is­ter Im­bert did not fur­nish the G-24 with any­thing that was not al­ready in the pub­lic do­main. Even with­out the Min­is­ter’s email, the G-24 could have eas­i­ly come across the cir­cum­stances of the re­spon­dent’s dis­missal in an or­di­nary due dili­gence ex­er­cise. Fur­ther­more, the re­spon­dent’s dis­missal was un­law­ful for want of nat­ur­al jus­tice. The mer­its of the dis­missal have not been con­sid­ered. Min­is­ter Im­bert’s email re­layed the cir­cum­stances of the dis­missal as it pre­vailed at the time. There were no pro­ceed­ings in court chal­leng­ing the mer­its of Page 52 of 149 de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate the re­spon­dent’s ap­point­ment. Min­is­ter Im­bert can­not be said to be mis­lead­ing the G-24 or be­ing un­fair to the re­spon­dent. In­stead, it was his du­ty (when ap­proached by the G-24) to in­form them that the re­spon­dent was ter­mi­nat­ed as gov­er­nor and the rea­sons for do­ing so.”

Min­is­ter Im­bert said the Ap­peal Court al­so dis­al­lowed around $2 mil­lion of the fi­nan­cial award made by the High Court Judge.

“I’ve ob­served that is not be­ing prop­er­ly iden­ti­fied in the news­pa­per re­ports. The Court of Ap­peal dis­al­lowed the bonus which was al­most $2 mil­lion and the vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages which was $175,000, so the award has been re­duced by $2 mil­lion,” he said.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter said he re­gard­ed the re­cent rul­ing as a step for­ward.

Con­cern­ing a pos­si­ble ap­peal at the Privy Coun­cil, Min­is­ter Im­bert said, “I will take ad­vice from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, I’ve asked him to ad­vise. You have to un­der­stand it is a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion, and it was against the AG, this was not against the Min­istry of Fi­nance, I am sim­ply a wit­ness, the prin­ci­pal wit­ness, but all con­sti­tu­tion­al mat­ters are de­fend­ed by the AG so he has to de­cide whether there will be an ap­proach to the Privy Coun­cil or not, I will not give an opin­ion on that.”

Guardian Me­dia asked Im­bert if he’s con­cerned about the re­cent loss­es in the courts in mat­ters that in­volve him and his con­duct. How­ev­er, he said the stats are in his favour.

“Last time I checked, we con­test­ed over 20 mat­ters and I think we won ei­ther 17 or 18 of them.”

Ram­bar­ran’s dis­missal came on De­cem­ber 24, 2015, three weeks af­ter he had named the top five users of for­eign ex­change by sec­tor and the amount they had used for the three pre­vi­ous years.

He was ac­cused of vi­o­lat­ing sev­er­al laws when he took the un­prece­dent­ed move of nam­ing the com­pa­nies.