Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal is de­mand­ing an­swers about the mas­sive pub­lic costs be­hind the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny’s (EM­B­DC) le­gal cam­paign, fol­low­ing a land­mark rul­ing by the Privy Coun­cil which dis­missed fraud al­le­ga­tions against Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors Lim­it­ed. He has al­so la­belled the case the most ex­pen­sive “witch-hunt” in the coun­try’s his­to­ry.

In a state­ment is­sued af­ter the rul­ing yes­ter­day, Dr Mooni­lal called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to be held per­son­al­ly ac­count­able for what he termed a “po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed” and cost­ly le­gal bat­tle.

“This rais­es the burn­ing ques­tion of the quan­tum of le­gal fees paid by this Gov­ern­ment to friends and fam­i­ly. The mil­lions in le­gal fees could have pro­vid­ed food cards for the hun­gry, med­i­cines to the poor at run-down hos­pi­tals, jobs for our des­per­ate youth and help for small busi­ness­es,” Dr Mooni­lal said.

He added, “Equal­ly alarm­ing is that all le­gal and pro­fes­sion­al fees are paid in for­eign cur­ren­cy. We have a forex cri­sis to­day, in part, be­cause all the forex have been used to pay lawyers in Mi­a­mi and Lon­don!! A busi­ness­man can­not get $200 US but mil­lions of US dol­lars and British pounds spent on king’s coun­sel in Lon­don.”

The Privy Coun­cil’s de­ci­sion, from a pan­el head­ed by Lord Stephens, sup­port­ed a 2020 Trinidad and To­ba­go Court of Ap­peal rul­ing that grant­ed Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors a sum­ma­ry judg­ment for un­paid work cer­tifi­cates on in­fra­struc­ture projects un­der­tak­en in 2015, when Mooni­lal was the Hous­ing Min­is­ter.

David Thomas KC, rep­re­sent­ing Ju­nior Sam­my, ar­gued suc­cess­ful­ly be­fore the Privy Coun­cil that there was no sub­stance to the EM­B­DC’s fraud al­le­ga­tions.

The EM­B­DC had claimed fraud and con­test­ed the con­trac­tor’s right to bring the claim, cit­ing what they al­leged was an ab­solute as­sign­ment of debt to a bank.

How­ev­er, Dr Mooni­lal said the Privy Coun­cil found that the EM­B­DC’s case was “fan­ci­ful and spec­u­la­tive,” con­firm­ing that the con­trac­tor re­tained the right to pur­sue out­stand­ing pay­ments.

Say­ing the ex­or­bi­tant fees paid to pur­sue the case “were tan­ta­mount to mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice,” Dr Mooni­lal ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of us­ing mil­lions of for­eign cur­ren­cy to pay friends and fam­i­ly of PNM of­fi­cials le­gal and pro­fes­sion­al fees for “hope­less cas­es.”

“So to­day, the tax­pay­er has to pay the con­trac­tor for all works prop­er­ly done to the tune of $231 mil­lion plus in­ter­est on out­stand­ing pay­ments car­ry­ing over for sev­en years at 5 per cent per year. An­oth­er $50 mil­lion. While they do­ing this, the Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Eatate is over­run with bush and a dump­ing ground for garbage. The for­mer Ca­roni work­ers can­not re­ceive a square foot of land in nine years be­cause of the vin­dic­tive­ness of the PNM,” Mooni­lal charged.

He con­demned the Gov­ern­ment’s man­age­ment of the case, sug­gest­ing it was a po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed “witch-hunt” aimed at con­trac­tors and of­fi­cials from the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“We have said that this was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed and the most ex­pen­sive witch hunt in his­to­ry. And they did not catch a witch,” Dr Mooni­lal said, em­pha­sis­ing that the pur­suit had been “de­void of ev­i­dence” and that his ad­min­is­tra­tion had en­sured de­ci­sions were “prop­er­ly and legal­ly tak­en, with in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ments and rec­om­men­da­tions.”