Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

For the third time in al­most five years, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has squared up for a le­gal bat­tle with for­mer Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran.

The two men ap­peared be­fore High Court Judge Kevin Ram­cha­ran at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day morn­ing for the start of the tri­al of Im­bert’s defama­tion case against Ram­bar­ran.

In the law­suit, Im­bert is con­tend­ing that Ram­bar­ran tar­nished his rep­u­ta­tion in a blog post­ed on his per­son­al web­site on June 9, 2019.

While the con­tents of the post can­not be re­peat­ed as they may even­tu­al­ly be found to be defam­a­to­ry it in­clud­ed ac­cu­sa­tions that Im­bert stymied Ram­bar­ran’s job prospects af­ter he was ter­mi­nat­ed from his role in the Cen­tral Bank in De­cem­ber 2015.

In his tes­ti­mo­ny, Im­bert ad­mit­ted that he had a con­tentious re­la­tion­ship with Ram­bar­ran since the lat­ter was ap­point­ed in 2012. He claimed that he was of­fend­ed when Ram­bar­ran de­scribed him as an “on-the-job trainee (OJT) Fi­nance Min­is­ter”.

“I found it dis­re­spect­ful...It was un­fair crit­i­cism,” Im­bert said.

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted us­ing the term in Par­lia­ment and on the po­lit­i­cal plat­form to sub­se­quent­ly de­scribe Ram­bar­ran.

“There was con­text. He (Ram­bar­ran) had nev­er man­aged an or­gan­i­sa­tion as com­plex as the Cen­tral Bank,” Im­bert said.

Im­bert claimed that af­ter Ram­bar­ran made the post, it was pub­lished by two dai­ly news­pa­pers and was a top­ic of dis­cus­sion on sev­er­al ra­dio talk shows.

While be­ing cross-ex­am­ined by Ram­bar­ran’s lawyer, Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Im­bert ad­mit­ted that the hosts of the talk shows and their callers made defam­a­to­ry re­marks about him based on it. How­ev­er, he con­fessed that he nev­er took le­gal ac­tion against them.

Im­bert claimed he re­ceived sev­er­al phone calls at his home af­ter mid­night with un­known callers quot­ing Ram­bar­ran’s al­le­ga­tions and de­scrib­ing him as a racist.

“I re­called peo­ple call­ing me all kinds of names and say­ing that I am racist,” he said.

Im­bert claimed he was of­fend­ed by the de­scrip­tion as his wife and his daugh­ter-in-law are of East In­di­an de­scent.

Ram­lo­gan sug­gest­ed that the blog had no im­pact on his rep­u­ta­tion as he (Ram­lo­gan) sug­gest­ed that he main­tained his po­si­tion as Diego Mar­tin North/East and Fi­nance Min­is­ter af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion in 2020.

“I ex­pect­ed you to come with that,” Im­bert said with a smile, as he main­tained that neg­a­tive com­men­ta­tors specif­i­cal­ly ref­er­enced the blog.

Im­bert was al­so quizzed on his cor­re­spon­dence with the for­mer Di­rec­tor of in­ter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic in­sti­tu­tion G-24, as Ram­bar­ran had ac­cused him of taint­ing his chances of re­ceiv­ing an ap­point­ment as a se­nior ad­vi­sor. He de­nied mak­ing prej­u­di­cial state­ments against Ram­bar­ran that would have cost him the job he was of­fered.

“In fact, I spoke to her last week and she con­firmed it,” he said.

In his ev­i­dence, Ram­bar­ran re­peat­ed­ly de­nied any wrong­do­ing as he main­tained that his post was a syn­op­sis of a judg­ment de­liv­ered by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad in a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) law­suit over Im­bert’s re­fusal to dis­close his com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the G-24 of­fi­cial.

Asked by Im­bert’s lawyer, Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, why he did not at­tach the doc­u­ments which were sup­plied by his client af­ter Jus­tice Seep­er­sad’s judg­ment, Ram­bar­ran sug­gest­ed that such a move was un­nec­es­sary.

“You can­not just at­tach every­thing to a blog. It is an en­cap­su­la­tion,” he said.

Mar­tineau al­so quizzed Ram­bar­ran on spe­cif­ic por­tions of the blog where he al­leged­ly said he could have pur­sued con­tempt of court against Im­bert as he missed Jus­tice Seep­er­sad’s dead­line for dis­clo­sure.

“I said I could have is­sued con­tempt of court pro­ceed­ings. I nev­er said he was in con­tempt of court,” Ram­bar­ran said.

Mar­tineau al­so sug­gest­ed that Ram­bar­ran’s is­sues with find­ing em­ploy­ment was due to his de­ci­sion to re­veal the biggest for­eign ex­change users in the coun­try, which Im­bert crit­i­cised at the time.

Mar­tineau said: “You were the ar­chi­tect of your own mis­for­tunes.”

“I do not think so,” Ram­bar­ran replied.

Ram­bar­ran’s cross ex­am­i­na­tion is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed when the tri­al re­sumes on De­cem­ber 4.

In June last year, High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad up­held Ram­bar­ran’s’s wrong­ful dis­missal law­suit and ruled that the ter­mi­na­tion of his ap­point­ment on Im­bert’s ad­vice was “se­ri­ous­ly flawed”.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad ruled that Ram­bar­ran’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to pro­tec­tion of the law and to a fair hear­ing in ac­cor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of fun­da­men­tal jus­tice were breached and that the de­ci­sion was il­le­gal, null, and void.

Jus­tice Ram­per­ad or­dered $5.47 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion, which most­ly rep­re­sent­ed the salary and ben­e­fits Ram­bar­ran would have re­ceived had his con­tract not been ter­mi­nat­ed be­fore it was due to end in Ju­ly 2017.

The judg­ment in the wrong­ful dis­missal case is cur­rent­ly be­ing chal­lenged be­fore the Court of Ap­peal.

Im­bert was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ja­son Mootoo, SC, and Rom­ney Thomas. Che Din­di­al, Asha Ram­lal, and Vishaal Siewsaran al­so rep­re­sent­ed Ram­bar­ran.