Asha Javeed and Rhon­dor Dowlat

The High Court has is­sued an in­ter­im or­der against Port-of-Spain In­fra­struc­ture Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, ef­fec­tive­ly bar­ring the com­pa­ny from com­mu­ni­cat­ing with ten­ants of Trin­ba­go Com­mer­cial De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed amidst a high-stakes le­gal dis­pute in­volv­ing Movi­eTowne.

The or­der was grant­ed by Madam Jus­tice Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well on Fri­day, fol­low­ing an ur­gent ap­pli­ca­tion by the claimant. Trin­ba­go Com­mer­cial De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, which ini­ti­at­ed the le­gal pro­ceed­ings, sought im­me­di­ate re­lief against the de­fen­dant, al­leg­ing that unau­tho­rised com­mu­ni­ca­tions were be­ing made to ten­ants oc­cu­py­ing build­ings lo­cat­ed on their prop­er­ty.

The dis­put­ed site, sit­u­at­ed at In­vaders Bay off the Au­drey Jef­fers High­way in Port-of-Spain, spans 9.9 acres (4.0236 hectares) and is cen­tral to the con­flict be­tween the two en­ti­ties.

In her rul­ing, Jus­tice Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well man­dat­ed that the de­fen­dant must re­frain from any form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the ten­ants con­cern­ing the build­ings in ques­tion. This mea­sure is in­tend­ed to pre­serve the sta­tus quo un­til the mat­ter is ful­ly heard and de­ter­mined.

The court fur­ther or­dered that all rel­e­vant le­gal doc­u­ments be prompt­ly served to the de­fen­dant, en­sur­ing trans­paren­cy and ad­her­ence to pro­ce­dur­al rules. The case has been sched­uled for a vir­tu­al hear­ing to­mor­row at 9, where the mat­ter will be ex­am­ined in greater de­tail.

The claimant, rep­re­sent­ed by JD Sel­l­i­er and Com­pa­ny, has com­mit­ted to cov­er­ing any dam­ages the de­fen­dant might suf­fer as a re­sult of com­ply­ing with the in­ter­im or­der.

Movi­eTowne of­fers PATT $1M to­wards $11M debt

Since May 2021, Trin­ba­go Com­mer­cial De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (TCDC) (which owns Movi­eTowne, Port-of-Spain) has not paid any rent to the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT).

Last Mon­day, TCDC sent a cheque of $1 mil­lion to­wards ac­crued debt of $10,904,121.23.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that when the con­struc­tion of Movi­eTowne was start­ed in 2001, the rental agree­ment was for 1.5 cents a square foot, which worked out to $6,500 a month. The lease agree­ment al­lowed for a rate re­view every five years.

Five years lat­er, in 2006, when the cine­plex/mall was op­er­a­tional, it moved to $72,000 a month. By 2021, it was now val­ued at 65 cents a square foot, which worked out to a month­ly rental rate of $283,000 a month. For com­par­i­son, one ten­ant, which has three sep­a­rate busi­ness­es in Movi­eTowne, pays a month­ly rental of $225,000 a month.

How­ev­er, the Sun­day Guardian was told that for the past three years, TCDC has not paid any rent on the new lease agree­ment as the com­pa­ny did not agree with the val­u­a­tion.

De­spite as­ser­tions by the com­pa­ny’s prin­ci­pal own­er Derek Chin that the com­pa­ny was still re­cov­er­ing from COVID loss­es, the PATT waived all rent to the com­pa­ny be­cause of COVID re­stric­tions as it was a non-es­sen­tial busi­ness.

Ac­cord­ing to a FOIA re­quest by Free­dom Law Cham­bers dat­ed June 20, 2023, the PATT waived $3,825,000 in an­nu­al in­come from Movi­eTowne from the shop­ping mall and $16,875 a month ($202,500 an­nu­al­ly) from the green park.

On Fri­day, the Port-of-Spain In­fra­struc­ture Com­pa­ny (POS­IN­CO), the com­pa­ny that man­ages PATT’s re­al es­tate, ex­er­cised its right of re-en­try and took pos­ses­sion of the premis­es leased to TCDC af­ter the debt amount­ed to $10.9 mil­lion.

“This re-en­try ex­er­cise was un­der­tak­en as a con­se­quence of breach­es of the terms and con­di­tions of the ex­ist­ing Deed of Lease be­tween POS­IN­CO and TCDC,” it said in a press re­lease on the mat­ter.

The com­pa­ny said it had been in dis­cus­sions with Movi­eTowne’s man­age­ment “for sev­er­al years re­gard­ing the said breach­es in an ef­fort to avoid (yes­ter­day’s) out­come,” but it had not borne fruit.

For its part, TCDC de­scribed the move as the “high-hand­ed, il­le­gal and bul­ly­ing ac­tions of the Port Au­thor­i­ty.”

The com­pa­ny stat­ed, “TCDC has of­fered to set­tle all out­stand­ing rental sums which are not in dis­pute and at­tempt­ed to pay such sums by cheque. The cheque was re­turned notwith­stand­ing cur­rent dis­cus­sions to set­tle all mat­ters, in­clud­ing dis­put­ed amounts.”

PATT chair­man Lyle Alexan­der told Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day the dis­cus­sions bore no fruit and that POS­IN­CO was now the land­lord. The Sun­day Guardian was told that the PATT would glad­ly al­low TCDC to re­claim the prop­er­ty once out­stand­ing sums had been cleared up, as they are not in the busi­ness of run­ning malls or movies.

But Movi­eTowne isn’t just ow­ing the PATT. In May, Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed that the cin­e­ma com­plex owed the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) $93 mil­lion in un­paid tax­es and penal­ties, which spans 20 years.

Movi­eTowne is 21 years old.

“A pay­ment plan was put in place,” Chin had told Guardian Me­dia. Movi­eTowne has four cine­plex­es—three in T&T—in Port-of-Spain, To­ba­go and San Fer­nan­do, and one in Guyana. Chin is al­so look­ing to ex­pand in­to Ja­maica with the Movi­eTowne brand.

“Re­cent­ly, we have been in talks with some peo­ple who are in­ter­est­ed in us go­ing to Ja­maica. We would like to be­come the equiv­a­lent of San­dals. So, hope­ful­ly, we will go in­to Ja­maica lat­er this year,” he told the Busi­ness Guardian in an in­ter­view in No­vem­ber 2023.

He had said that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed busi­ness­es such as cin­e­mas. In his in­ter­view, he lament­ed the dif­fi­cul­ties of do­ing busi­ness in T&T. “We just cre­at­ed a beau­ti­ful di­nosaur park, some­thing that many coun­tries would want to have. We gave Trinidad the first one in the Caribbean. The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion de­cid­ed to clas­si­fy these mov­ing gi­gan­tic ex­hibits as toys de­spite telling them they are not toys and are ed­u­ca­tion­al ex­hibits high­light­ing the Juras­sic era. They con­tin­ued to clas­si­fy them as toys while any kinder­garten kid will tell you oth­er­wise,” he had said.

Chin, the Sun­day Guardian was told, is out of the coun­try ad­dress­ing health mat­ters.