Derek Achong

An in­ter­na­tion­al to­bac­co dis­trib­u­tor, with a free zone des­ig­na­tion, has been giv­en the clear­ance to sue the Min­istry of Health over a de­ci­sion to shut down its op­er­a­tions for fail­ing to have rel­e­vant li­cences.

Last Fri­day, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad grant­ed North Amer­i­can Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed leave to pur­sue its ju­di­cial re­view law­suit against the min­istry.

Seep­er­sad was al­so asked to con­sid­er an ap­pli­ca­tion from the com­pa­ny for an in­junc­tion against the de­ci­sion but it (the ap­pli­ca­tion) was even­tu­al­ly with­drawn af­ter the min­istry agreed to al­low the com­pa­ny to con­tin­ue its op­er­a­tions with­out the req­ui­site li­cens­es while it (the min­istry) con­tin­ues to con­sult with the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try.

Ac­cord­ing to the court fil­ings, the com­pa­ny, which is lo­cat­ed at the In­ter­con­ti­nen­tal Busi­ness Park, Free Zone Com­plex, in D’Abadie, be­gan op­er­at­ing al­most 20 years ago af­ter reg­is­ter­ing with the T&T Free Zones Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed un­der the Free Zone Act.

Un­der the leg­is­la­tion, reg­is­tered and ap­proved com­pa­nies are giv­en spe­cif­ic tax con­ces­sions and ex­emp­tions.

The com­pa­ny claimed that it im­ports to­bac­co prod­ucts from in­ter­na­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ers and stores them in its lo­cal ware­house be­fore ex­port­ing them to re­tail­ers in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca. It not­ed that it does not re­tail or dis­trib­ute its prod­ucts in T&T.

The com­pa­ny claimed that in Jan­u­ary last year, it was in­formed of the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of a new spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone regime, which was in­tro­duced un­der then-re­cent­ly pro­claimed leg­is­la­tion.

In No­vem­ber, last year, cus­toms and po­lice of­fi­cers con­duct­ed a raid on the com­pa­ny with­out a war­rant.

Last month, Ger­ren Col­ly­more, the man­ag­er of the min­istry’s To­bac­co Con­trol Unit, con­tact­ed the com­pa­ny and in­formed it that it could not con­tin­ue to op­er­ate with­out li­cens­es un­der the To­bac­co Con­trol Act.

The com­pa­ny claimed that it lost ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$979,714 by the de­ci­sion as it was forced to stop its planned im­ports and ex­ports.

“The ap­pli­cant’s busi­ness has been se­vere­ly com­pro­mised and hin­dered since the re­ceipt of the said de­ci­sion of 9th Feb­ru­ary 2023, which has had the cu­mu­la­tive ef­fect of jeop­ar­dis­ing its con­tin­ued ex­is­tence,” its lawyers said.

In the law­suit, the com­pa­ny is claim­ing that the min­istry’s de­ci­sion was un­rea­son­able and ir­ra­tional. It is con­tend­ing that the min­istry’s unit did not have in­her­ent ju­ris­dic­tion with­in a free zone such as where it op­er­ates.

Through the law­suit, the com­pa­ny is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions against the de­ci­sion as well as com­pen­sa­tion.

“The ap­pli­cant is en­ti­tled to dam­ages in­clu­sive of dam­age to rep­u­ta­tion and loss of op­por­tu­ni­ty re­sult­ing from the un­law­ful de­ci­sion made by the re­spon­dent,” lawyers said.

The case is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing be­fore Seep­er­sad on April 24.

The com­pa­ny was rep­re­sent­ed by John Heath, Li­onel Luck­hoo and Shel­don My­coo. The min­istry was rep­re­sent­ed by Mar­sha Con­nell.