For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Ma­haraj is plan­ning le­gal ac­tion against the writ­ers and pub­lish­ers of an on­line ar­ti­cle that links him to the pur­chase of prop­er­ties in Pana­ma which were lat­er trans­ferred to his client, Kr­ish­na Lal­la, own­er of Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices Ltd (SIS).

Ma­haraj, who is cur­rent­ly out of the coun­try, said in a tele­phone in­ter­view: “The ar­ti­cle is to­tal­ly er­ro­neous. I’ve al­ready con­tact­ed my firm to do a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the writer and pub­lish­er.

I do not know where they got that in­for­ma­tion but it is com­plete­ly un­true,” he said.

Ma­haraj said he rep­re­sents Lal­la’s two main com­pa­nies, SIS and Rain­for­est Re­sorts, but has nev­er owned any prop­er­ties in Pana­ma.

“It is in­cor­rect, defam­a­to­ry and se­ri­ous li­bel,” he said. “I will be fil­ing ac­tion.”

Lal­la’s com­pa­nies re­ceived over a bil­lion dol­lars in con­tracts from the for­mer Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship, in­clud­ing the con­tentious $1.6 bil­lion Beetham Waste­water Treat­ment Plant that was left aban­doned when the Gov­ern­ment changed in 2015 and lat­er of­fi­cial­ly shelved by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC).

Just af­ter the elec­tion, Lal­la re­port­ed­ly left the coun­try but it was un­clear where he had mi­grat­ed. There was spec­u­la­tion that he moved to Pana­ma but that has nev­er been con­firmed.

Lal­la was al­so once em­broiled in a le­gal wran­gle with for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) chair­man Jack Warn­er over a mul­ti-mil­li­on-dol­lar cash in­jec­tion in­to then UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day’s po­lit­i­cal cam­paign in 2007. The mat­ter reached to the Privy Coun­cil but was re­turned with­out judg­ment to the lo­cal High Court for de­lib­er­a­tion. At that time, one of Warn­er’s at­tor­ney’s said Lal­la con­trib­uted some $26 mil­li­on to Pan­day’s cam­paign but when that bid failed, at­tempt­ed to get back some of the mon­ey by say­ing it was a loan and not fi­nan­cial sup­port.

It was al­so re­vealed in those court hear­ings that Lal­la was linked to more than 18 com­pa­nies, with eight sub­sidiaries get­ting hefty gov­ern­ment con­tracts be­tween 2010 and 2014.