Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Con­cerns have been raised over com­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, in re­la­tion to a pro­ce­dur­al ap­peal in a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar car­tel case over con­tracts award­ed by the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (EM­BD) in the run-up to the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tions.

Last Fri­day, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing con­tract­ing com­pa­nies Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing Ltd (Ramhit), Kall Com­pa­ny Ltd (Kall­co) and Fides Lim­it­ed wrote to the Court of Ap­peal to com­plain about com­ments about the ap­peal made by Row­ley dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s on June 12.

In his state­ment, Row­ley ap­peared to have al­leged that the Court of Ap­peal had ruled in EM­BD’s favour and ruled that the de­fen­dants, in­clud­ing Dr Mooni­lal, had to file their de­fences for the pro­tract­ed case to go to tri­al.

“As we stand here now, Mr Mooni­lal (sic) and oth­ers have to put in a de­fence in the court to this claim for the loss of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars,” Row­ley said.

“To this day, none of them has put in a de­fence. So, while Mr Mooni­lal (sic) is froth­ing about $3.4 mil­lion for the Cari­com (crime) sym­po­sium, he has a de­fence to put in the court to ac­count for hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars that con­trac­tors were fa­cil­i­tat­ed with un­der his port­fo­lio to the ex­tent where he is a de­fen­dant in the court,” he added.

Row­ley made veiled ref­er­ences to a con­sent or­der that was en­tered dur­ing a hear­ing of the ap­peal last month, un­der which the de­fen­dants in the case agreed to file their de­fences with­in 45 days of the Ap­peal Court rul­ing in the ap­peal.

Dr Mooni­lal mean­while sought to ad­dress Row­ley’s com­ments as he ad­dressed a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Mon­day Night Fo­rum in Aranguez on Mon­day.

Dr Mooni­lal sought to ques­tion how Dr Row­ley could make pro­nounce­ments on the case when the Ap­peal Court is sched­uled to give its de­ci­sion on the ap­peal next Fri­day.

“This is June. How the hell he knows what the Court of Ap­peal will de­ter­mine? How he knows that? Is Kei­th Row­ley in ca­hoots with Judges at the Court of Ap­peal? Are they speak­ing to him? Is he speak­ing to them?” Mooni­lal said.

He al­so called on Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie to look in­to the mat­ter.

“It speaks to the un­der­min­ing of the rule of law of the Ju­di­cia­ry in a coun­try where a Prime Min­is­ter is telling the coun­try he knows what the Court of Ap­peal will de­ter­mine,” Mooni­lal said.

The state­ments made by Row­ley and Mooni­lal were con­sid­ered by Ap­pel­late Judges Nolan Bereaux, Mark Mo­hammed and Maria Wil­son dur­ing a hear­ing of the case at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

A tran­script of Row­ley’s state­ment was read out and a video record­ing of Mooni­lal’s com­ments was played on a tele­vi­sion screen in the court, which is nor­mal­ly used for vir­tu­al court hear­ings.

Both Jus­tices Bereaux and Wil­son ques­tioned why the con­trac­tors’ le­gal team wrote to the court in­stead of seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion from EM­BD’s le­gal team. They al­so sug­gest­ed that the con­trac­tors’ at­tor­neys could have clar­i­fied the sta­tus of the case with Mooni­lal.

“Wasn’t it al­so your du­ty to com­mu­ni­cate with the first re­spon­dent (Mooni­lal) and in­form him what was said was not true,” Jus­tice Wil­son said.

The con­trac­tors’ lead at­tor­ney, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, ro­bust­ly de­fend­ed the ac­tion tak­en by his team.

“Lawyers have a fun­da­men­tal right and oblig­a­tion to com­mu­ni­cate with the court. I do not see why I should com­mu­ni­cate with the oth­er side. It was done in good faith,” Ma­haraj said.

“I did not make any al­le­ga­tions of bias. What I did was in the in­ter­est of the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice,” he added, as he claimed he had faith in the court’s im­par­tial­i­ty.

King’s Coun­sel David Phillip, who leads EM­BD’s le­gal team, did not take is­sue with the con­cerns raised by Ma­haraj but sug­gest­ed that it was plain­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate for any­one to sug­gest the court was af­fect­ed by ex­ter­nal in­flu­ences.

“It is our sub­mis­sion that we re­spect­ful­ly de­pre­ci­ate what Dr Mooni­lal has said,” he said.

Af­ter hear­ing the sub­mis­sions, the pan­el stat­ed that it would de­cide on what ac­tion, if any, to take in re­la­tion to the state­ments af­ter it de­liv­ers its rul­ing in the ap­peal next week.

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.

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

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

It al­so claimed 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 to the con­trac­tors.

Through the law­suit, the EM­BD is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions against the par­ties, in­clud­ing one on the il­le­gal­i­ty of the con­tracts.

In the ap­peal, three of the con­trac­tors are con­tend­ing that for­mer High Court Judge and cur­rent Ap­pel­late Judge James Aboud got it wrong when he dis­missed their ap­pli­ca­tion to strike out the case against them.

They are con­tend­ing that EM­BD did not pro­vide enough par­tic­u­lars on its al­le­ga­tions against them for them to prop­er­ly re­spond to the law­suit.

How­ev­er, Jus­tice Aboud ruled that the EM­BD had pre­sent­ed suf­fi­cient pre­lim­i­nary facts, which should be de­ter­mined by the court at an even­tu­al tri­al.

“Some­one has to ex­plain at the ap­pro­pri­ate time in a way that is sen­si­ble how it is that these un­usu­al pat­terns, odd­i­ties, and in­con­sis­ten­cies can ex­ist oth­er than by col­lu­sion by con­trac­tors,” Aboud said.

EM­BD is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Se­nior Coun­sel Ja­son Mootoo.

The sub­stan­tive case, which has been re­as­signed to High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad, has been put on hold pend­ing the out­come of the ap­peal.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal promised to is­sue a press re­lease ad­dress­ing the de­vel­op­ment. How­ev­er, the re­lease had not been is­sued up to late yes­ter­day.