A pair of busi­ness­men and a com­pa­ny owned by one of them have been or­dered to re­pay $7 mil­lion to a com­pa­ny for a con­struc­tion project that did not get off the ground.

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad made the or­der yes­ter­day as he up­held Ad­vance Hose and Mar­ket­ing Lim­it­ed’s law­suit against Cordell Philbert, Joash Ram­jat­tan, and Ram­jat­tan’s com­pa­ny ZA Lim­i­ty En­gi­neer­ing Con­sul­tan­cy.

The law­suit cen­tred around a con­tract for a ma­jor con­struc­tion project en­tered be­tween Ad­vance Hose and Mar­ket­ing and Philbert in Ju­ly 2023.

The com­pa­ny pur­sued le­gal pro­ceed­ings af­ter it ad­vanced the mon­ey to Philbert and his com­pa­ny, but they failed to per­form the work or re­turn the mon­ey.

In late Oc­to­ber, last year, the com­pa­ny’s lawyers led by Jagdeo Singh ob­tained a Nor­wich Phar­ma­cal or­der from a High Court Judge in re­la­tion to the RBC Roy­al Bank (T&T) Lim­it­ed ac­count held by Philbert that the com­pa­ny trans­ferred the funds to.

Such or­ders seek to com­pel third par­ties such as fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to re­veal con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion of their clients, which can be then used to pur­sue lit­i­ga­tion over al­leged wrong­do­ing.

That com­pa­ny claimed that Philbert’s fi­nan­cial records showed that af­ter re­ceiv­ing the funds, $6 mil­lion was trans­ferred to an ac­count held by at­tor­ney Varun De­bideen.

It fur­ther claimed that $624,650 was trans­ferred to Ram­jat­tan’s com­pa­ny.

De­bideen, who was ini­tial­ly list­ed as a de­fen­dant in the case, firm­ly de­nied that he was in­volved in any sus­pect­ed con­spir­a­cy af­ter his bank ac­counts were tem­porar­i­ly frozen dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary stages of the lit­i­ga­tion.

He ad­mit­ted that he rep­re­sent­ed Ram­jat­tan and point­ed to a $24 mil­lion loan agree­ment, for which the mon­ey was part, which he pre­pared for Philbert and his client.

He claimed that the in­ter­im pay­ment by Philbert to Ram­jat­tan un­der the agree­ment was used to pay a por­tion of a $3.4 mil­lion judg­ment debt Ram­jat­tan owed to a third par­ty and his as­so­ci­at­ed le­gal fees.

De­bideen was re­moved from the law­suit be­fore the case went to tri­al in Feb­ru­ary af­ter he en­tered in­to a con­sent agree­ment with the com­pa­ny.

In de­ter­min­ing the case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad de­scribed Ram­jat­tan as the “crim­i­nal mas­ter­mind” be­hind all the trans­ac­tions.

“The Court hav­ing seen and heard the wit­ness­es, formed the view that the First De­fen­dant (Philbert) was a sim­ple man who was mal­leable and the Court is con­vinced on a bal­ance of prob­a­bil­i­ties that the Sec­ond De­fen­dant (Ram­jat­tan) ex­ploit­ed his re­li­gious fer­vour and groomed him to un­know­ing­ly en­gage in a com­pli­cat­ed, fraud­u­lent de­sign,” he said.

“The con­duct of these De­fen­dants was crim­i­nal, cal­lous and cal­cu­lat­ing and they in­flict­ed sub­stan­tial loss and un­jus­ti­fied dam­age on the Claimant,” he added.

Tak­ing aim at the loan agree­ment be­tween Philbert and Ram­jat­tan, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that it made no com­mer­cial sense as it was due to last 30 years and had no in­ter­est in­clud­ed.

“In the Court’s view, this was a sham doc­u­ment which lacked com­mer­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty and it was de­signed and draft­ed to cir­cum­vent “source of funds” oblig­a­tions so as to in­duce third par­ties in­clud­ing the banks in­to think­ing that the sum was a le­git­i­mate loan when in fact it was not so,” he said, as he de­clared the loan agree­ment null and void.

Re­fer­ring to the Code of Ethics in the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion Act, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said that the court had a du­ty to en­sure that the in­tegri­ty of the le­gal pro­fes­sion is main­tained.

“The Court al­so has an in­ter­est in en­sur­ing that mem­bers of the pub­lic are pro­tect­ed from the shys­ters dressed in le­gal robes,” he said.

“Courts can nei­ther rub­ber stamp un­scrupu­lous be­hav­iour by mem­bers of the le­gal pro­fes­sion nor can it turn a blind eye to con­duct which may be un­law­ful, un­pro­fes­sion­al, and/or un­eth­i­cal,” he added.

While Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered Philbert, Ram­jat­tan and Ram­jat­tan’s com­pa­ny to re­pay the mon­ey to Ad­vance Hose and Mar­ket­ing plus in­ter­est, he or­dered that his judg­ment in the case be sent to the Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion for it to pos­si­bly con­duct a probe in­to De­bideen’s con­duct.

“The Claimant may al­so wish to ob­tain le­gal ad­vice as to whether he too should al­so ad­vance a com­plaint as against the for­mer Third De­fen­dant (De­bideen) to the said Com­mit­tee,” he said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, De­bideen said his le­gal team was analysing the judg­ment and con­sid­er­ing whether to file an ap­peal as find­ings were es­sen­tial­ly made in re­la­tion to his con­duct when he was re­moved from the case and un­able to re­spond to the al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against him.

The com­pa­ny was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Leon Kalicha­ran, and Ka­ri­na Singh. Philbert was rep­re­sent­ed by Ker­ra Bazzey, while An­drew Ram­subeik rep­re­sent­ed Ram­jat­tan and his com­pa­ny.