Asha Javeed

The Port of Spain In­fra­struc­ture Com­pa­ny (POS­IN­CO) has con­demned the ac­tion tak­en by Derek Chin, the ma­jor share­hold­er of Movi­eTowne and its lease­hold­er, the Trin­ba­go Com­mer­cial De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (TCDC), to seek to en­ter the premis­es with armed se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to POS­IN­CO, Chin had to get ap­proval from the court and at this time, there is no lease with TCDC.

Since Au­gust 23, when POS­IN­CO ex­er­cised its right to re-en­ter the com­pound, it has had of­fi­cers sta­tioned at the ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cers and the ban­quet hall. 

Around noon on Fri­day, Chin and of­fi­cers of his se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny, Tele­com Se­cu­ri­ty, which al­so man­ages the se­cu­ri­ty around Movi­eTowne, went to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fices of Movi­eTowne and sought en­try.

The clash was record­ed on tele­phones by both Chin’s se­cu­ri­ty and port se­cu­ri­ty and post­ed shared wide­ly on so­cial me­dia.

In the video, Chin’s of­fi­cers, while seek­ing en­try are heard telling port of­fi­cers that they are armed. 

“Most of us have firearms,” the of­fi­cer said.

In re­sponse, the port of­fi­cer is heard say­ing he has a job to do. Af­ter two min­utes, he calls Port man­age­ment and is told to hold his ground.

The Port then con­tact­ed the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) who han­dled the mat­ter.

In a state­ment, POS­IN­CO said it was forced to con­tact the TTPS af­ter se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers of Tele­com Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices be­gan is­su­ing threats of vi­o­lence against them. 

It said that POS­IN­CO had com­plied with the con­di­tions of an or­der hand­ed down on Mon­day by the High Court, which called on POS­IN­CO to not in­ter­fere with Movi­eTowne’s op­er­a­tions, nor that of its ten­ants, while the sub­stan­tive mat­ter be­tween POS­IN­CO and the TCDC is heard.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, TCDC and Mr Chin have failed to co­op­er­ate and have sought to thwart all ef­forts by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of POS­IN­CO in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties. POS­IN­CO takes this op­por­tu­ni­ty to call on TCDC to al­low good sense and cool heads to pre­vail giv­en that the mat­ter is cur­rent­ly be­fore the Court,” the state­ment said.

Chin re­sponds

Chin said the POS­IN­CO state­ment was “all lies.”

He said, “They are des­per­ate. We want­ed the front door to our of­fices closed for con­fi­den­tial and air con­di­tion­ing rea­sons. There is no need for the port se­cu­ri­ty which sit out­side our of­fices to want to come in­to our of­fices. As a mat­ter of fact, that’s in­ter­fer­ence in our op­er­a­tions and in di­rect con­flict with the court or­der that was is­sued by Jus­tice Hon­ey­well. The port se­cu­ri­ty de­cid­ed not to al­low us to close our of­fice door. Our of­fi­cers are not armed but the port big boy is. He threat­ened the Tele­com of­fi­cer to dis­charge his weapon if we tried to close the door. In ad­di­tion, they placed a card­board box to keep the door open. 

“Al­so the port again re­fused to ac­cept an­oth­er cheque which has been the case all along un­til they get the full amount and that which is dis­put­ed in the courts now.

“They in­tim­i­date my staff all day and have no rea­son to have ac­cess to our of­fice where things can be stolen and where we keep our con­fi­den­tial files.

“They have al­so al­lowed us ac­cess be­tween 8 am to 4 pm and de­mand we leave af­ter 4. Movi­eTowne is not a 8-4 busi­ness as you well know. Last night, we had an event that end­ed at 11 pm. Our staff need­ed to ac­cess our of­fices, same for our ban­quet cen­tre. So if they feel they have the right to oc­cu­py, they cer­tain­ly are abus­ing the court or­der is­sued by Jus­tice Hon­ey­well,” he said.

Ten­ants seek le­gal ad­vice

Mean­while, Movi­eTowne’s ten­ants are seek­ing le­gal ad­vice on to whom they have to pay their rent. As it stands, the court has $3 mil­lion in es­crow, as the dis­pute con­tin­ues with the POS­IN­CO, which man­ages land held by the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (PATT), and TCDC.

High Court Judge Eleanor Don­ald­son-Hon­ey­well has left it open to them to make their pay­ments to ei­ther of the com­pa­nies or the court while the dis­pute is be­ing de­ter­mined.

Since May 2021, TCDC has not paid any rent to the PATT and has ac­crued a debt of $10,904,121.23.

In its sub­stan­tive law­suit, TCDC is chal­leng­ing the lat­est rental in­crease, which was based on a re­port pre­pared by reg­is­tered val­u­a­tion sur­vey­or GA Far­rell & As­so­ciates.

Chin, in an in­ter­view with Pow­er 102 said that TCDC was in dis­agree­ment with the eval­u­a­tion be­cause the build­ings which he con­struct­ed were in­clud­ed. This, he said, is why they had not paid any rent.

For his part, Port Au­thor­i­ty chair­man Lyle Alexan­der said that TCDC chose not to pay any rent, even if they dis­put­ed the sum. 

He said that not pay­ing any rent at all al­lows the land­lord the right to rem­e­dy is­sues.

In this in­stance, it was re-en­try in­to the prop­er­ty. 

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 spanned a pe­ri­od of 20 years.  Movi­eTowne is 21 years old.

He told Pow­er 102 that he was guilty of not fil­ing its tax re­turns in a time­ly man­ner over a 20 year pe­ri­od and blamed his ac­coun­tants.

“We have the $93 mil­lion, of which $60 mil­lion is the in­ter­est alone. The amount has to be con­test­ed which we have shown them. Yes we were guilty in terms of not fil­ing our re­turns but we talk­ing about 20 years” Chin said on the mat­ter.