Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A High Court judge hear­ing the wind-up pe­ti­tion of Ni­Quan En­er­gy (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed has giv­en Re­pub­lic Bank un­til June 3 to sub­mit a fi­nan­cial plan to save the com­pa­ny.

When the mat­ter came up be­fore Jus­tice West­min James, at­tor­ney Jonathan Walk­er, who rep­re­sents Re­pub­lic Bank, op­posed the wind­ing-up pe­ti­tion filed by Free­dom Law Cham­bers on be­half of Ni­Quan’s for­mer vice pres­i­dent David Small on the ba­sis that it was a most ex­treme method for en­force­ment of a judg­ment debt.

Re­pub­lic Bank is the col­lat­er­al agent un­der a short-term note in­stru­ment (STNI) is­sued by Ni­Quan to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 note­hold­ers from var­i­ous coun­tries.

Al­though he con­ced­ed that the com­pa­ny is in se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, Walk­er asked for time to de­vise a method­ol­o­gy ac­cept­able to the com­pa­ny and/or its cred­i­tors, in­clud­ing Small, to avoid the wind­ing up pro­ceed­ings. He said this would in­clude a man­ag­er go­ing in­to the com­pa­ny, look­ing at Ni­Quan and giv­ing rea­sons why the debts ac­cu­mu­lat­ed. He said the process will in­volve high-pow­ered and so­phis­ti­cat­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions.

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the in­ter­ests of the se­cured cred­i­tors agreed with Walk­er’s po­si­tion. How­ev­er, Small’s at­tor­neys said they were pre­pared to sub­mit to the court a draft wind­ing-up or­der as Ni­Quan failed to in­di­cate its fi­nan­cial po­si­tion to sup­port a stay on the wind­ing-up pro­ceed­ings.

The judge re­ject­ed any at­tempts to re­move the fixed tri­al date on June 25 but gave Walk­er time to de­vise a plan to save Ni­Quan from the wind-up pro­ceed­ings.

How­ev­er, if the se­cured and un­se­cured cred­i­tors of Ni­Quan, in par­tic­u­lar Small, re­ject or op­pose the pro­posed po­si­tion, Re­pub­lic Bank will have to for­mal­ly put ev­i­dence be­fore the court by the fil­ing of af­fi­davits, set­ting out their rea­sons for ob­ject­ing to the wind­ing up of the com­pa­ny by June 14.

Free­dom Law Cham­bers has to re­ply to the af­fi­davits by June 21.

Last Sep­tem­ber, Small was award­ed a $20,647,017 judg­ment by the courts for breach of con­tract by Ni­Quan. He sub­se­quent­ly filed a wind-up pe­ti­tion af­ter the com­pa­ny failed to pay him.

On Wednes­day, some 75 work­ers re­ceived ter­mi­na­tion let­ters from Ni­Quan. Ear­li­er this month, the work­ers were told in an email from Ni­Quan’s founder and di­rec­tor, Ains­ley Gill, that they had run out of mon­ey to keep the plant op­er­a­tional and it was go­ing to be moth­balled.

The work­ers had been on fur­lough since last Sep­tem­ber. The plant was shut down fol­low­ing the death of Massy En­er­gy em­ploy­ee Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon on June 15, 2023, and the ter­mi­na­tion of the gas sup­ply con­tract by the T&T Up­stream Down­stream Com­pa­ny (TTUDEO­CL) over a US$21 mil­lion debt.