Derek Achong

The for­mer gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Co­co Reef Re­sort and Spa in To­ba­go has be­gun his wrong­ful dis­missal law­suit against the com­pa­ny that owns the ho­tel and its own­er. 

Er­ic Fe­ni­et took the wit­ness stand at a court­room at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain as the tri­al of his mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar law­suit against Bel­la For­ma Re­sorts Lim­it­ed and its Bermu­da-based own­er John Jef­feris com­menced be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad, on Mon­day

Through­out his tes­ti­mo­ny, the French­man was re­peat­ed­ly quizzed by the com­pa­ny’s lawyer Mar­tin George over the un­ortho­dox du­ties he claimed that he was asked to per­form by Jef­feris from when he was hired as the re­sort’s food and bev­er­age man­ag­er in 1995 to when he was ter­mi­nat­ed as gen­er­al man­ag­er and com­pa­ny di­rec­tor in May 2020. 

Fe­ni­et main­tained his sala­cious claims that he was tasked with re­cruit­ing “young, slen­der and sin­gle” women to serve as Jef­feris’ per­son­al as­sis­tants. He al­so claimed to have hired es­corts on the 76-year-old ho­tel mag­nate’s be­half. 

While Fe­ni­et claimed that the as­sis­tants were ex­pect­ed to have a sex­u­al re­la­tion­ship with Jef­feris, he main­tained that he nev­er propo­si­tioned them for sex on Jef­feris’ be­half. 

“I nev­er said to the ladies you have to do so...Lots of them de­cid­ed not to take the job,” Fe­ni­et said, as he claimed that one re­cruit was suc­cess­ful and he made arrange­ments for her to trav­el to Bermu­da to meet Jef­feris. 

Fe­ni­et claimed that he did not con­sid­er that his ac­tions pos­si­bly in­fringed lo­cal hu­man traf­fick­ing and pros­ti­tu­tion laws. 

“I nev­er forced any­one to do any­thing,” he said. 

Fe­ni­et al­so stat­ed that based on their long-stand­ing re­la­tion­ship, he agreed to par­tic­i­pate in “oc­cult” rit­u­als on Jef­feris’ re­quest in­clud­ing emp­ty­ing an un­known sub­stance on the perime­ter of a par­cel of land owned by a busi­ness­man, with whom Jef­feris had a le­gal dis­pute. 

“I did what the man (Jef­feris) asked...It was out of love,” he added. 

Al­though Fe­ni­et ad­mit­ted that he did not per­form the nor­mal du­ties of a com­pa­ny di­rec­tor af­ter be­ing pro­mot­ed by Jef­feris, he ad­mit­ted that he still re­ceived the $140,000 an­nu­al salary for 14 years.  

He al­so main­tained that Jef­feris promised to give him US$1.5 mil­lion as part of his even­tu­al re­tire­ment pack­age in a writ­ten doc­u­ment. 

“I guess Mr Jef­feris was hap­py with my work. He would not have giv­en me that if he did not like me and if I was not do­ing my job,” Fe­ni­et said. 

Fe­ni­et al­so claimed that dur­ing the course of his em­ploy­ment, he as­sist­ed Jef­feris by us­ing his Eu­ro­pean bank ac­counts to trans­fer mon­ey to and from his (Jef­feris) busi­ness­es in Cu­ba, which were af­fect­ed by the Unit­ed States eco­nom­ic em­bar­go on that coun­try. 

How­ev­er, Fe­ni­et claimed that he did not think that the trans­fers were il­le­gal at the time he fa­cil­i­tat­ed them. 

Fe­ni­et was al­so in­ter­ro­gat­ed over the trav­el awards he claimed he earned on the re­sort’s be­half dur­ing his over two-decade stint there. 

He de­nied be­ing aware that the re­sort paid in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el com­pa­nies for the recog­ni­tion. 

“I did not make up the awards,” he said. 

Through the law­suit, Fe­ni­et, who re­ceived three months’ re­mu­ner­a­tion to­talling US$45,919.23 in lieu of no­tice when he was ter­mi­nat­ed, is claim­ing that he should re­ceive com­pen­sa­tion for six years cal­cu­lat­ed at US$832,500 and $1.4 mil­lion based on his ded­i­ca­tion to his job and his role in mak­ing the re­sort a suc­cess. 

He is claim­ing the US$1.5 mil­lion pay­ment and a par­cel of land, which he claims Jef­feris al­so promised him. 

Fe­ni­et is al­so seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for defama­tion as he claims that the ho­tel made li­bel­lous com­ments against him in an email sent to re­peat cus­tomers an­nounc­ing his de­par­ture from the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

In de­fence of the case, the com­pa­ny has de­nied any wrong­do­ing as it claims Fe­ni­et’s al­le­ga­tions as scan­dalous, friv­o­lous, and vex­a­tious. 

It al­so claimed that Fe­ni­et was ter­mi­nat­ed as he did not per­form his du­ties in a sat­is­fac­to­ry man­ner, en­gaged in fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety, and en­gaged in ro­man­tic and sex­u­al re­la­tion­ships with sub­or­di­nates. 

Stat­ing that the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic and its as­so­ci­at­ed re­stric­tions neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed the re­sort, the com­pa­ny said: “It was in this con­text that the First De­fen­dant was con­strained to re­view its op­er­a­tions and to ter­mi­nate the Claimant’s em­ploy­ment for re­dun­dan­cy with ef­fect from May 28, 2020.”  

While he was list­ed as a de­fen­dant in the case, Jef­feris did not par­tic­i­pate by giv­ing ev­i­dence due to his cur­rent health con­di­tion and was rep­re­sent­ed by his com­pa­ny’s le­gal team. 

Fe­ni­et is ex­pect­ed to com­plete his ev­i­dence when the case re­sumes this morn­ing. 

Fe­ni­et was rep­re­sent­ed by Ter­rence Bharath, Daniel­la Bharath, and Ma­ri­na Nar­i­nesingh. The com­pa­ny and Jef­feris were al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Sarah Lawrence.