Derek Achong and

Jensen La Vende

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan is ap­peal­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter and Fi­nance Min­is­ter to con­sid­er al­low­ing cit­i­zens who were un­able to con­vert their $100 bills for the poly­mer notes.

Ram­lo­gan made the ap­peal fol­low­ing a re­cent High Court rul­ing that or­dered the State to pay the es­tate of a woman over four times what she could not have ex­changed.

On Fri­day, the State was or­dered to pay over $40,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to the es­tate of an el­der­ly woman, who was de­nied an op­por­tu­ni­ty to change old cot­ton $100 bills to poly­mer notes in 2020 as she was strand­ed abroad dur­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic.

High Court Judge Devin­dra Ram­per­sad or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion as he up­held a law­suit brought by Shantee Nanan over the re­fusal of for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to grant her an ex­ten­sion to change $10,000 based on her ex­ten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances.

In his ap­peal, Ram­lo­gan said the judg­ment was part of a test case with hun­dreds more yet to be filed and now that there is prece­dent.

He said this could save the coun­try hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars as tax­pay­ers would not have to pay for the mis­takes of politi­cians.

“I there­fore is­sue an ap­peal to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo to demon­strate some com­pas­sion and fair­ness and to show some mer­cy be­cause these peo­ple have suf­fered enough. Let us be fair to them and let them make their ap­pli­ca­tions to Min­is­ter Tan­coo so that, in le­git­i­mate cas­es, they can be al­lowed to ex­change their old $100 notes that they saved by dint of their hard labour, to get the new notes be­cause the old notes in their pos­ses­sion are val­ue­less.”

Af­ter some 5,000 peo­ple were tem­porar­i­ly locked out of the coun­try dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, a num­ber of cit­i­zens were un­able to con­vert their old cot­ton $100 bills for the poly­mer notes.

The dead­line to ex­change the notes was De­cem­ber 31, 2019 and lat­er ex­tend­ed to March 31, 2020, with ex­ten­sion be­ing grant­ed be­yond that un­der strict con­di­tions.

The coun­try’s bor­ders were closed on March 22, 2020, with per­sons need­ing clear­ance by the Gov­ern­ment to be al­lowed en­try.

Ram­lo­gan said those who re­main with their sav­ings in old cot­ton notes are not drug lords or crim­i­nals but the down­trod­den who kept their sav­ings at home and were un­able to change them be­cause they were out of the coun­try and locked out.

Nanan died in Sep­tem­ber 2024 while the case was still pend­ing, and her son, Edi­son, was sub­sti­tut­ed by Ram­lo­gan to con­tin­ue the case.

In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad ruled that Nanan was de­nied due process as Im­bert did not dis­close the cri­te­ria for ex­er­cis­ing his dis­cre­tion un­der sec­tion 27 of the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Pro­ceeds of Crime and Cen­tral Bank) Act 2019.

“Hav­ing re­served a dis­cre­tion ca­pa­ble of re­liev­ing her, the State was oblig­ed, be­fore de­priv­ing her of the val­ue of her prop­er­ty, to pub­lish cri­te­ria by which that dis­cre­tion would be ex­er­cised, so that she might know what she had to show, make mean­ing­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tions, and chal­lenge any re­fusal,” Jus­tice Ram­per­sad said.

“It pub­lished none, and it pro­ceed­ed to re­place it with a stat­ed dis­cre­tion and a blan­ket re­fusal,” he added.

He al­so con­sid­ered ev­i­dence that Nanan was among 94 sim­i­lar­ly cir­cum­stanced cit­i­zens who ap­plied but were de­nied an ex­ten­sion by Im­bert.

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad point­ed out that she had a valid ex­cuse for miss­ing the April 2020 dead­line for the de­mon­eti­sa­tion ex­er­cise.

“She was abroad at­tend­ing to her grave­ly ill hus­band; she fell ill her­self, and the clo­sure of bor­ders pre­vent­ed her re­turn un­til af­ter the pe­ri­od passed,” he said.

In as­sess­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion for Nanan, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad ques­tioned a sug­ges­tion from State at­tor­neys that she should on­ly re­ceive the val­ue of the cash she was un­able to con­vert.

“The Court ac­cepts that the loss of sav­ings of this or­der, to a per­son of the claimant’s age and cir­cum­stances, at­tend­ed by an un­ex­plained and un­rea­soned re­fusal of re­lief, would have oc­ca­sioned re­al dis­tress and in­con­ve­nience be­yond bare pe­cu­niary de­pri­va­tion,” he said.

He or­dered $30,000 in vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages for breach­es of Nanan’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

“Its pur­pose is not to pun­ish the State but to vin­di­cate the right, to em­pha­sise its im­por­tance, and to de­ter the con­tin­u­a­tion of an ar­bi­trary prac­tice,” he said.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Nanan’s son de­scribed the out­come as bit­ter­sweet, as his moth­er was not alive to ex­pe­ri­ence it.

He blamed the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Stu­art Young, as he claimed that his moth­er would have been able to meet the dead­line if she was al­lowed to re­turn home soon­er.

“She was ex­treme­ly frus­trat­ed when she saw so many wealthy peo­ple be­ing al­lowed to re­turn home whilst she was strand­ed here,” he said.

“Her pleas to Stu­art Young fell on deaf ears, and the Gov­ern­ment’s si­lence on how some peo­ple were be­ing al­lowed to re­turn home whilst oth­ers were left strand­ed was de­press­ing and dis­ap­point­ing,” he added.

Nanan was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ganesh Sa­roop and Vishaal Siewsaran. Gilbert Pe­ter­son, Michael Quam­i­na, Mon­i­ca Smith and Brent James rep­re­sent­ed the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.