Derek Achong

For­mer CL Fi­nan­cial ex­ec­u­tive and for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) trea­sur­er An­dre Mon­teil is be­ing sued by his for­mer land­scap­er for $300,000 in un­paid main­te­nance fees for his two prop­er­ties in To­ba­go.

In his court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Zim­roy Williams are claim­ing that he was forced to file the law­suit af­ter Mon­teil re­peat­ed­ly broke promis­es to clear the debt, which stems from work done at his prop­er­ties in Buc­coo and Low­lands be­tween late 2017 and 2019. 

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ments, Williams claims that in Jan­u­ary 2017 he en­tered in­to an oral agree­ment with Mon­teil to main­tain the prop­er­ties for $20,000 a month. 

Williams per­formed the ser­vices as agreed and re­ceived his month­ly pay­ments un­til No­vem­ber that year. 

Mon­teil re­port­ed­ly promised to pay Williams, who agreed to con­tin­ue his ser­vices even with­out an out­stand­ing bal­ance.

He claimed that in Feb­ru­ary 2018, Mon­teil gave him a $40,000 cheque to cov­er the last two months of the pre­vi­ous year but it was dis­hon­oured by the bank. 

Williams con­tin­ued to per­form the work with­out pay un­til Au­gust 2018 when he stopped af­ter Mon­teil’s as­sur­ances over­pay­ment con­tin­ued to not ma­te­ri­alise. 

“In light of the De­fen­dant’s guar­an­tees and as­sur­ances, the Claimant de­cid­ed to re­sume all land­scap­ing and gar­den­ing ser­vices in Sep­tem­ber 2018 at the said prop­er­ties, as he had a gen­uine be­lief that all ef­forts would be made by the De­fen­dant to sat­is­fy the out­stand­ing debt owed to him,” Williams’ lawyers said in his court fil­ings. 

They claimed that he con­tin­ued un­til April 2019, when he fi­nal­ly stopped. 

Af­ter he did, Mon­teil made one month­ly pay­ment.

They claimed that af­ter they sent a le­gal let­ter on Williams’ be­half, Mon­teil al­leged­ly ac­knowl­edged his in­debt­ed­ness and again promised to pay. 

Through the law­suit, Williams is seek­ing the mon­ey he is still owed plus in­ter­est. 

Ear­li­er this year, Mon­teil, the for­mer chair­man of Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank (CIB), and for­mer CIB Pres­i­dent Richard Trot­man were or­dered to pay the bank al­most $100 mil­lion in resti­tu­tion over a con­tro­ver­sial un­se­cured loan Mon­teil took be­fore the bank’s col­lapse.

De­liv­er­ing a 129-page judge­ment, in April, High Court Judge Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams ruled that both Mon­teil and Trot­man were re­spon­si­ble for the un­paid $78 mil­lion loan as they breached their fidu­cia­ry du­ties to the bank in fa­cil­i­tat­ing it, well over a decade ago.

Williams is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Mar­tin George and Lak­sh­mi Lal­la.