For­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran has been or­dered to pay over $100,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert for defama­tion.

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment via email on Mon­day, High Court Judge Kevin Ram­cha­ran up­held Im­bert’s claim and or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Im­bert may have to wait a while be­fore he po­ten­tial­ly re­ceives the dam­ages or­dered, as Ram­bar­ran is ex­pect­ed to ap­peal the out­come.

The law­suit cen­tred around a blog post on Ram­bar­ran’s per­son­al web­site on June 9, 2019.

While the con­tents of the post can­not be re­peat­ed as such was deemed 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.

Ram­bar­ran al­so al­leged that Im­bert breached a court or­der in a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) law­suit over Im­bert’s re­fusal to dis­close his com­mu­ni­ca­tions with an of­fi­cial of the in­ter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic in­sti­tu­tion G24, who was try­ing to re­cruit him.

Deal­ing with the sec­ond al­le­ga­tion first, Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran ruled that Ram­bar­ran ought to have known that the court or­der was ex­tend­ed as a pub­lic hol­i­day fell with­in the sev­en-day pe­ri­od in which Im­bert was giv­en to dis­close the cor­re­spon­dence.

“Even if some­how, de­spite his for­mer po­si­tion, he was not aware of the pro­vi­sions, com­mon sense would dic­tate that a dead­line for some­thing like com­pli­ance with a court or­der, could not fall on a non-work­ing day,” Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran said.

“The con­clu­sion he drew, there­fore, would not have been hon­est­ly reached by a rea­son­able per­son and there­fore is defam­a­to­ry of the Claimant as it al­leges that he was so pet­ty and spite­ful that he breached a court or­der,” he added.

Deal­ing with Im­bert’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the G24 of­fi­cial, Ram­cha­ran ruled that Im­bert did not af­fect Ram­bar­ran’s em­ploy­ment prospects as claimed.

“The let­ter in which the of­fer of em­ploy­ment was re­voked makes it clear that the rea­son for the re­vo­ca­tion of the of­fer was con­se­quent on there be­ing some mat­ter on which the Sec­re­tari­at was wait­ing be­fore the ap­point­ment could be fi­nalised,” Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran said.

Not­ing that it was ob­vi­ous that the de­ci­sion was not based on Im­bert de­lay­ing re­spond­ing to the of­fi­cial, he point­ed out that Im­bert re­spond­ed one month be­fore the re­vo­ca­tion was com­mu­ni­cat­ed.

“Fur­ther, there is no men­tion of the Claimant’s re­sponse be­ing a neg­a­tive against the De­fen­dant,” Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran said.

In as­sess­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion for Im­bert, Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran not­ed that he was not en­ti­tled to sig­nif­i­cant dam­ages as the al­le­ga­tions were not as se­ri­ous as in oth­er po­lit­i­cal cas­es.

“The ar­ti­cle does not ac­cuse the Claimant of en­gag­ing in il­le­gal or un­law­ful con­duct, or of hold­ing ab­hor­rent views, such as be­ing a racist,” he said.

“In­so­far as the Claimant re­ceived racist abuse from the de­fend­ers of the De­fen­dant, this is more due to the state of pol­i­tics in T&T than any­thing the De­fen­dant wrote in his ar­ti­cle,” he added.

Ram­bar­ran was ap­point­ed to the post in Ju­ly 2012.

The de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate him came short­ly af­ter he an­nounced that T&T was in a re­ces­sion and af­ter he re­vealed the biggest for­eign ex­change users in the coun­try.

In his con­sti­tu­tion­al claim, he con­tend­ed that the gov­ern­ment un­law­ful­ly re­voked his ap­point­ment in breach of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights

In 2022, Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad ruled that his ter­mi­na­tion was “se­ri­ous­ly flawed” and his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to pro­tec­tion of the law and to a fair hear­ing in ac­cor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of fun­da­men­tal jus­tice were breached.

Ram­bar­ran was award­ed over $5.47 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion, which was most­ly based on the salary he would have re­ceived un­der his con­tract had it not been ter­mi­nat­ed.

In Feb­ru­ary, Ap­pel­late Judges Nolan Bereaux, Mark Mo­hammed, and Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar dis­missed an ap­peal from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al chal­leng­ing Jus­tice Ram­per­sad’s de­ci­sion.

How­ev­er, the Ap­peal Court mar­gin­al­ly re­duced the com­pen­sa­tion owed to Ram­bar­ran.

Le­gal sources said that Ram­bar­ran’s po­ten­tial ap­peal in the defama­tion case may be re­lat­ed to Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran’s find­ings in re­la­tion to the failed re­cruit­ment, which con­tra­dict­ed con­cur­rent find­ings made by Jus­tice Ram­per­sad and up­held by the Court of Ap­peal.

Im­bert was rep­re­sent­ed by Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, Ja­son Mootoo, SC, and Rom­ney Thomas. Ram­bar­ran was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Che Din­di­al, Asha Ram­lal, and Vishaal Siewsaran.