Gail Alexan­der

The Mi­a­mi-Dade Cir­cuit court yes­ter­day de­nied a mo­tion by busi­ness­man Steve Fer­gu­son, for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung and US busi­ness­man Raul Gutier­rez Jr for a new tri­al fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful out­come of T&T’s Pi­ar­co civ­il as­set for­fei­ture case.

This was in­di­cat­ed in a state­ment from Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al Rawi, T&T’s cor­po­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the case. The State is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive a fi­nal award of al­most $1 bil­lion.

On March 29, a ju­ry com­pris­ing six res­i­dents of Mi­a­mi-Dade Coun­ty, Flori­da, found Fer­gu­son li­able for mul­ti­ple claims aris­ing from fraud per­pe­trat­ed in con­nec­tion with re­de­vel­op­ment of Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in the late 1990s and ear­ly 2000s.

The court had ear­li­er found that Kuei Tung and Gutier­rez Jr., for­mer prin­ci­pal of Cal­maquip En­gi­neer­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, the firm that pro­vid­ed spe­cial­ized equip­ment at the air­port, were li­able. Cal­maquip was for­mer­ly head­quar­tered in Mi­a­mi.

On April 17, af­ter cal­cu­la­tion of in­ter­est and set off to be made on ac­count of pay­ments be­ing made to T&T as a re­sult of pre­vi­ous or­ders and set­tle­ments, the State filed for en­try of fi­nal judg­ment pur­suant to the ju­ry ver­dict in to­tal judg­ment amount of US$131,403,245.64

How­ev­er, on April 13, Fer­gu­son, Kuei Tung and Gutier­rez Jr, filed mo­tions for judg­ment in ac­cor­dance with mo­tion for di­rect­ed ver­dict and for a new tri­al. The mat­ter was heard yes­ter­day by Jus­tice Reem­ber­to Di­az who de­nied the mo­tions, ac­cord­ing to Al Rawi’s state­ment .

“Trinidad and To­ba­go’s mo­tion for fi­nal judg­ment re­mains pend­ing. Judge Di­az has sched­uled that mo­tion for hear­ing in two weeks on Fri­day, May 12, 2023, and he has in­struct­ed de­fen­dants to sub­mit their own ver­sion of a fi­nal judg­ment no lat­er than Wednes­day, May 10, 2023 at 5 pm.

“The State ex­pects that this will be the fi­nal hear­ing in the tri­al court, ahead of any ap­peal by de­fen­dants which will be bound by strict time­lines and with strict con­di­tions. The state is en­ti­tled to the pay­ment of sig­nif­i­cant costs in­curred in the pur­suit of this mat­ter since 2004 and is in pur­suit of the same for the Trinidad and To­ba­go peo­ple,” the state­ment added.