Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (EM­BD) has added new al­le­ga­tions to its on­go­ing mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar car­tel law­suit against a group of con­trac­tors, EM­BD of­fi­cials and for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.

The fresh al­le­ga­tions be­ing made by the State com­pa­ny were con­tained in its amend­ed state­ment of case filed by its at­tor­neys on Mon­day.

The sub­stan­tive law­suit cen­tres around 12 con­tracts for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of roads and in­fra­struc­ture, which were grant­ed to five con­trac­tors be­fore the Sep­tem­ber 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

TN Ram­nauth and Com­pa­ny, Kall Co Lim­it­ed (Kall­co), and Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing ini­ti­at­ed the pro­ceed­ings against the State-owned spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny for the al­most $200 mil­lion bal­ance owed on their re­spec­tive con­tracts.

How­ev­er, EM­BD counter-sued the con­trac­tors claim­ing that they, as well as con­trac­tors Fides and Na­mal­co, con­spired to­geth­er with Mooni­lal, for­mer EM­BD CEO Gary Par­mas­sar, di­vi­sion­al man­ag­er Mad­hoo Bal­roop, and en­gi­neer An­drew Walk­er, to cor­rupt­ly ob­tain the con­tracts.

It al­so claimed that the par­ties agreed to fa­cil­i­tate the con­trac­tors re­ceiv­ing pre­lim­i­nary pay­ments for the work, which was al­leged­ly over­priced and sub­stan­dard, and utilised a loan, meant to pay for oth­er le­git­i­mate con­tracts, to make in­ter­im pay­ments.

Through the law­suit, EM­BD is seek­ing $275 mil­lion plus in­ter­est, and a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions against the par­ties, in­clud­ing one on the il­le­gal­i­ty of the con­tracts.

The Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed on the week­end that the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the EM­BD, which was be­ing led by British in­ves­ti­ga­tor Kate McMa­hon (a Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice), has been paused al­though it was well ad­vanced.

But in its amend­ed civ­il case, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the EM­BD has fur­ther claimed that Mooni­lal served as a “shad­ow di­rec­tor” of the com­pa­ny, as its for­mer of­fi­cials re­port­ed to and took in­struc­tions from him.

It claimed that Mooni­lal breached his fidu­cia­ry du­ties and those un­der the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act.

EM­BD’s main new al­le­ga­tion is in re­la­tion to pay­ments al­leged­ly made by the con­trac­tors to third par­ties, who it claimed were con­nect­ed to Mooni­lal and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

“Such pay­ments (or ben­e­fits as­so­ci­at­ed with them) con­sti­tut­ed se­cret com­mis­sions re­ceived by the First De­fen­dant (Mooni­lal) in breach of his fidu­cia­ry du­ties and his du­ties to the Re­pub­lic un­der the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act 2000,” it said.

At­tached to the amend­ed court fil­ings was a sched­ule that sought to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion on the pay­ments made to the third par­ties—two men and an ad­ver­tis­ing agency.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, the two men re­ceived $12,955,000 and $11,436,500 re­spec­tive­ly, and the com­pa­ny re­ceived $15,631,610 in a se­ries of bank trans­fers from the con­trac­tors, around the time they re­ceived in­ter­im pay­ments for the projects. The duo and the com­pa­ny’s iden­ti­ties were with­held, as the al­le­ga­tions made in re­la­tion to them have not been proven and up­held by a judge and they have not been added to the case.

EM­BD point­ed out that while it was seek­ing spe­cial court or­ders for their fi­nan­cial records, one of the men ad­mit­ted he re­ceived the pay­ments, which he be­lieved was pay­ment for me­dia ser­vices pro­vid­ed to the UNC for their elec­tion cam­paign in 2015.

EM­BD fur­ther claimed that the busi­ness­man on­ly re­tained $904,637 and paid the mon­ey to sev­er­al oth­er per­sons, in­clud­ing a spe­cial ad­vi­sor to a se­nior Op­po­si­tion mem­ber, who al­so served in an ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tion in the par­ty.

The man re­port­ed­ly claimed that the pay­ment was the ad­vi­sor’s con­sul­tan­cy fees. He al­so claimed he paid $800,000 to the ad­vi­sor’s as­so­ciate/ro­man­tic part­ner.

Deal­ing with the oth­er iden­ti­fied man, EM­BD claimed it was not aware of any le­git­i­mate ex­pla­na­tion for him re­ceiv­ing the sig­nif­i­cant pay­ments from the con­trac­tors. “EM­BD has no knowl­edge about the ac­tiv­i­ties of (name with­held), and is not aware that he had any in­volve­ment in the EM­BD con­tracts,” it said.

It high­light­ed a se­ries of pay­ments sub­se­quent­ly made by the man. “(Name with­held) in turn paid out sig­nif­i­cant sums to var­i­ous per­sons/en­ti­ties which ap­pear to op­er­ate in event-re­lat­ed and sup­port­ing in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing event plan­ning and or­gan­i­sa­tion, sup­ply of au­dio-vi­su­al ser­vices, mo­bile pow­er gen­er­a­tion, struc­ture and scaf­fold­ing, equip­ment, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and tal­ent,” it said.

In terms of the ad­ver­tis­ing com­pa­ny, EM­BD iden­ti­fied 35 pay­ments made by the con­trac­tors be­tween March and May 2015.

“The First De­fen­dant (Mooni­lal) ben­e­fit­ed from them, be­cause they as­sist­ed the elec­tion cam­paign of his po­lit­i­cal par­ty and hence him (as a se­nior mem­ber of the par­ty tak­ing part in the cam­paign and stand­ing for of­fice),” it said.

The move to amend the case was raised when it came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad, a day af­ter the amend­ment was filed.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, lawyers for the de­fen­dants sug­gest­ed the move was un­fair as it came al­most sev­en years af­ter the case was filed. One of the se­nior lawyers went as far as to de­scribe it (the case) as the “worst case of po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion” he has ever seen in his long ca­reer.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad in­ter­vened and point­ed out that it would have been point­less for the com­pa­ny to amend its case be­fore a pro­ce­dur­al ap­pli­ca­tion over the suf­fi­cien­cy of the ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed against them was fi­nal­ly de­ter­mined by the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil late last year. While he lament­ed over pre­vi­ous de­lays in re­solv­ing the case, he as­sured the par­ties he would man­age it ef­fi­cient­ly go­ing for­ward.

He set time­lines for the de­fen­dants to amend their de­fences in light of the fresh al­le­ga­tions and ad­journed the case to May 27.

While the case was at a pre­lim­i­nary stage, TN Ram­nauth, Fides and Kall­co brought an ap­pli­ca­tion to strike it out on the ba­sis that EM­BD did not give suf­fi­cient par­tic­u­lars of their pur­port­ed wrong­do­ing. In Au­gust 2020, then-High Court Judge and cur­rent Ap­peal Court Judge James Aboud re­ject­ed it, as he ruled that EM­BD had pre­sent­ed suf­fi­cient pre­lim­i­nary facts which should be de­ter­mined by the court.

The case was even­tu­al­ly re­as­signed to Jus­tice Seep­er­sad af­ter Jus­tice Aboud was pro­mot­ed.

In agree­ing with their col­league, in Jan­u­ary last year, Ap­pel­late Judges Char­maine Pem­ber­ton, Pe­ter Ra­jku­mar and Vasheist Kokaram ruled that EM­BD had prop­er­ly plead­ed that it suf­fered ac­tu­al pe­cu­niary loss as a re­sult of the al­leged un­law­ful means con­spir­a­cy be­tween the con­trac­tors and State of­fi­cials.

The three com­pa­nies filed a fi­nal ap­peal be­fore the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil.

How­ev­er, the British Law Lords re­fused them leave to pur­sue the case, as they ruled they did not raise an ar­guable point of law or of gen­er­al pub­lic im­por­tance.

EM­BD is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Roger Mootoo, SC, Sav­it­ri Sookraj-Be­har­ry, Jerome Ra­j­coomar and Tama­ra Toolsie.