An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The own­ers of the Movi­eTowne com­plex at In­vad­er’s Bay, Mu­cu­rapo, and the man­age­ment of the Port-of-Spain In­fra­struc­ture Com­pa­ny (POS­IN­CO) and the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (PATT) seem head­ing for a show­down.

This af­ter Movi­eTowne was forced to sus­pend cer­tain op­er­a­tions yes­ter­day, af­ter bailiffs moved to levy on them to re­cov­er more than $10 mil­lion in rent owed to POS­IN­CO.

Movi­eTowne was re­port­ed to be ow­ing POS­IN­CO a to­tal of $10,904,121.23 in ar­rears, which was ac­crued be­tween 2021 to the present.

How­ev­er, in a state­ment last evening, Movi­eTowne said the move was “il­le­gal” and “high-hand­ed”, adding it at­tempt­ed to pay the out­stand­ing ar­rears via cheque but was re­fused and will now head to the court to rec­ti­fy the mat­ter.

Ear­li­er, POS­IN­CO said it ex­er­cised the right of re-en­try to take pos­ses­sion of the premis­es leased to the Trin­ba­go Com­mer­cial De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (TCDC) around 10 am.

Mul­ti­cin­e­mas Trinidad Lim­it­ed, Cine­plex Cin­e­mas Lim­it­ed and the Trin­ba­go Com­mer­cial De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (TCDC) to­geth­er formed Movi­eTowne, which was opened in No­vem­ber 2002. That en­ti­ty had been leas­ing the land from POS­IN­CO.

But POS­IN­CO said yes­ter­day’s ac­tion was un­der­tak­en, “as a con­se­quence of breach­es of the terms and con­di­tions of the ex­ist­ing Deed of Lease be­tween POS­IN­CO and TCDC.”

The ex­er­cise re­sult­ed in bailiffs lock­ing down the Movi­eTowne ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fice and the Ban­quet Hall, which led to all per­son­nel be­ing eject­ed from these two lo­ca­tions.

De­spite this, the on­ly in­di­ca­tion to ten­ants that some­thing was amiss was when they re­ceived a let­ter no­ti­fy­ing them that the head lease is­sued to Movi­eTowne had come to an end.

In the doc­u­ment, which bore the let­ter­head of the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T and was signed by POS­IN­CO’s act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Lenin Oliviere, of­fi­cials ad­vised, “Take no­tice that the head lease has come to an end. PoS­IN­CO has ex­er­cised its rights un­der the head lease to ter­mi­nate the head lease and to take pos­ses­sion of the premis­es.”

The let­ter ex­plained that with the head lease hav­ing come to an end, this meant “any agree­ment which you had with TCDC has al­so come to an end.”

Ex­ist­ing ten­ants were in­formed, “It is there­fore nec­es­sary that new arrange­ments should be made to en­sure that you con­tin­ue in oc­cu­pa­tion of the premis­es with­out any in­ter­rup­tion.”

Ten­ants were al­so in­struct­ed in the let­ter that “all rent is to be re­mit­ted to POS­IN­CO with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.”

The oc­cu­piers of shops, restau­rants and kiosks were giv­en 48 hours to sign the let­ters and con­tact the act­ing Di­vi­sion­al Man­ag­er Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment, Kyle Reid, to fa­cil­i­tate new com­mer­cial arrange­ments with POS­IN­CO in or­der to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing on the premis­es.

Close to two hours af­ter, gen­er­al li­censed bailiffs Ramkar­ran Ram­paras and Vi­dal Ram­paras con­duct­ed a walk-in pos­ses­sion of the com­plex.

POS­IN­CO there­after is­sued a re­lease dis­clos­ing they had been in dis­cus­sions with TCDC for sev­er­al years re­gard­ing the breach­es in an ef­fort to avoid yes­ter­day’s out­come, while main­tain­ing its rights un­der the Deed of Lease to re-en­ter.

Claim­ing that those dis­cus­sions had not borne fruit, POS­IN­CO as­sured ef­forts were made to en­sure the re-en­try ex­er­cise was done “peace­ably and in a man­ner that would be the least dis­rup­tive to the ten­ants and oth­er stake­hold­ers of TCDC.”

Of­fi­cials said all ef­forts would be made to con­tin­ue to treat the mat­ter with the sen­si­tiv­i­ty re­quired and in ac­cor­dance with the laws of T&T. They added that ef­forts had been made to en­sure the lock­down was not dis­rup­tive to ten­ants and vis­i­tors to the mall.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the TCDC will have a grace pe­ri­od in which to re­solve the is­sue with POS­IN­CO.

Un­jus­ti­fied ac­tion

In a re­sponse last evening, TCDC con­demned the ac­tion by the PATT and the POS­IN­CO and said it was ini­ti­at­ing le­gal ac­tion against both par­ties.

In ad­vis­ing its cus­tomers that busi­ness at the es­tab­lish­ment will con­tin­ue un­in­ter­rupt­ed, Movi­eTowne man­age­ment la­belled the ac­tions of the PATT and POS­IN­CO as “high-hand­ed, il­le­gal and bul­ly­ing.”

“TCDC has of­fered to set­tle all out­stand­ing rental sums which are not in dis­pute and at­tempt­ed to pay such sums by cheque. The cheque was re­turned notwith­stand­ing cur­rent dis­cus­sions to set­tle all mat­ters, in­clud­ing dis­put­ed amounts. PATT and POS­IN­CO there­after at­tempt­ed il­le­gal and un­law­ful en­try via its pri­vate agents,” the TCDC claimed.

Movi­eTowne man­age­ment said its le­gal team had de­scribed the ac­tions of POS­IN­CO and PATT as “un­jus­ti­fied and il­le­gal.”

The state­ment said le­gal pro­ceed­ings will “com­mence short­ly” against PATT and POS­IN­CO, in­clu­sive of in­junc­tive re­lief to en­sure re­dress to TCDC and the pro­tec­tion of its ten­ants and em­ploy­ees.

“TCDC re­as­sures our pa­trons that our Port-of- Spain fa­cil­i­ty con­tin­ues to be open and our team will spare no ef­fort to en­sure their safe­ty and main­tain and en­hance the pre­mi­um ser­vice lev­els that fam­i­lies and clients have come to ex­pect and de­serve.”

Ten­ants caught

by sur­prise

Yes­ter­day’s re-en­try ex­er­cise at Movi­eTowne did not in­clude the seizure or re­moval of any as­sets from the premis­es by agents of POS­IN­CO.

Guardian Me­dia was told the bailiffs had been met with some “push-back” af­ter the ini­tial an­nounce­ment, fol­low­ing which Ryan Chin was sum­moned to the mall.

Chin, who is the son of Movi­eTowne own­er Derek Chin, said he was “try­ing to sort things out” when he was ap­proached by re­porters.

Even as he promised to speak lat­er on, se­cu­ri­ty guards phys­i­cal­ly be­gan as­sault­ing me­dia per­son­nel, as they de­mand­ed re­porters and pho­tog­ra­phers va­cate the premis­es.

A skir­mish en­sued as a for­eign na­tion­al shoved a pho­tog­ra­ph­er and re­porter as the me­dia at­tempt­ed to get pic­tures of Chin sur­round­ed by guards. An­oth­er re­porter was al­so as­sault­ed as oth­er guards rushed to grab his phone to pre­vent him from record­ing the in­ci­dent.

Ten­ants, who spoke to Guardian Me­dia on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said this was the first they were aware of the sit­u­a­tion, as their rental agree­ments had been made with TCDC.

Ex­press­ing fear that hun­dreds would be on the bread­line if the Movi­eTowne com­plex was shut down, one busi­ness op­er­a­tor said, “We are work­ing hard every day and pay­ing our rent on time.”

He asked, “What would hap­pen to us now?Many of us have tak­en loans for our busi­ness­es, so how will we be able to ser­vice these debts?”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the Movi­eTowne em­ploy­ees would have been hos­tile as a re­sult of the move by the bailiffs, an­oth­er own­er de­scribed the events as, “an un­pleas­ant sur­prise.”

Even as this was un­fold­ing up­stairs, vis­i­tors to the com­plex strolled through un­aware of what was tak­ing place.

In an email sent to all ten­ants at 2 pm yes­ter­day, TCDC of­fi­cials ad­vised, “De­spite the in­for­ma­tion be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed by the me­dia, the mall and cin­e­ma op­er­a­tions will re­main open for busi­ness­es. Any fur­ther de­vel­op­ments on this sit­u­a­tion will be cir­cu­lat­ed and in­formed.”

Sev­er­al ten­ants yes­ter­day said they be­lieved the mat­ter had been re­lat­ed to the rev­e­la­tion two months ago that Movi­eTowne own­er Derek Chin was ow­ing the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) $93 mil­lion in un­paid tax­es and penal­ties.

In an in­ter­view in May, Chin con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that the debt spanned a pe­ri­od of 20 years.

The lo­ca­tion at In­vad­er’s Bay, Mu­cu­rapo, is 21 years old, and was the first in the cine­plex fran­chise, which al­so has out­fits in San Fer­nan­do, To­ba­go and Guyana. The Movi­eTowne branch in Ch­agua­nas was closed just af­ter the COVID pan­dem­ic in No­vem­ber 2020.