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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

New EMBD board to decide fate of cartel case—lawyer

Judge knocks Mooni­lal for ab­sence from hear­ing

by

34 days ago
20250618

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achnog@guardian.co.tt

The in­com­ing Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (EM­BD) board will have the fi­nal say on the fate of its on­go­ing mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar car­tel law­suit against a group of con­trac­tors, for­mer EM­BD of­fi­cials and for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter and cur­rent En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.

The yet-to-be-ap­point­ed board’s role in the con­tro­ver­sial case, ini­ti­at­ed un­der the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion, arose yes­ter­day dur­ing the first case man­age­ment con­fer­ence be­fore High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad.

EM­BD lawyer An­drew Hunter, KC, said the new board will have to make sev­er­al de­ci­sions on the case, in­clud­ing ap­prov­ing court fil­ings and the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with ex­pert wit­ness­es.

Hunter said: “I wish I could give you an ex­act date but it is gov­ern­ment ap­point­ments. We hope it will take weeks and be done by the end of Ju­ly. It is not ide­al by any means.”

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ad­journed the case to No­vem­ber 24 for the process to be com­plet­ed and for EM­BD to re­port back to him.

How­ev­er, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ex­pressed hope that the EM­BD’s re­spons­es to the de­fence raised by the de­fen­dants in the case would not lead to pro­tract­ed pro­ce­dur­al ap­peals, as oc­curred be­fore it (the case) was trans­ferred to him when Jus­tice James Aboud was el­e­vat­ed to the Court of Ap­peal.

“These are the old­est mat­ters on my dock­et. I ab­solute­ly have no in­ten­tion of hav­ing them linger on with­out be­ing de­ter­mined one way or the oth­er,” he said.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so took is­sue with the ab­sence of Mooni­lal and oth­er de­fen­dants, who were rep­re­sent­ed by their lawyers.

“I am very much not sat­is­fied when I’m be­ing told that per­sons have com­mit­ments that seem to ob­vi­ate their abil­i­ty to ap­pear be­fore the court,” Seep­er­sad said.

“Nec­es­sary arrange­ments are to be made, and un­less there are ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances which the court should be in­formed of pri­or to the hear­ing, I re­al­ly ex­pect the de­fen­dants to be present,” he added.

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 lit­i­ga­tion against the State-owned spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny for the al­most $200 mil­lion bal­ance owed on their re­spec­tive con­tracts.

EM­BD coun­ter­sued 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 the 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.

Ear­li­er this year, EM­BD amend­ed its case to claim that Mooni­lal served as a “shad­ow di­rec­tor” of the com­pa­ny, as its for­mer of­fi­cials re­port­ed to and took in­struc­tions from him. It claimed Mooni­lal breached his fidu­cia­ry du­ties and those un­der the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act.

EM­BD’s main new al­le­ga­tion was 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).

At the time of the amend­ment, then-Op­po­si­tion leader, now new­ly elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, de­scribed the case as a “po­lit­i­cal witch-hunt.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar sug­gest­ed that the lat­est al­le­ga­tions were “fab­ri­cat­ed” and did not de­bar Mooni­lal from be­ing screened for the April 28th Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

While the EM­BD fell un­der the Min­istry of Hous­ing dur­ing Mooni­lal’s pre­vi­ous tenure, it was re­cent­ly trans­ferred to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land, and Fish­eries, based on a no­tice pub­lished in the T&T Gazette late last month.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein, who al­so serves as Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land, and Fish­eries, for com­ment on the ex­pect­ed ap­point­ments to EM­BD’s board. Both did not re­spond to mes­sages sent to their cell phones via What­sapp.


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