Renu­ka Singh

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress fi­nancier and founder of Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices (SIS) Kr­ish­na Lal­la failed in a bid to stop fur­ther me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to SIS and sev­er­al mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar con­tracts that com­pa­ny has re­ceived.This ac­tion stemmed from a Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle last week which la­belled Lal­la a "bil­lion-dol­lar man" af­ter SIS won the con­tro­ver­sial con­tract for the Beetham waste­water re­cy­cling fa­cil­i­ty.

Lal­la filed a broad in­junc­tion against the T&T Guardian on Wednes­day, seek­ing the High Court's pro­tec­tion against fur­ther prob­ing ar­ti­cles on SIS. Lal­la al­so sought to stop ref­er­ences that he was still tied to the com­pa­ny he found­ed, say­ing he had sold his shares in the com­pa­ny to his son and was re­tained as a "con­sul­tant."Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes and at­tor­ney Michael Quam­i­na ar­gued on be­half of the T&T Guardian that there was no need for an in­junc­tion, as the sto­ry con­tained no defam­a­to­ry state­ments.

Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in, pre­sid­ing at the Hall of Jus­tice, in Port-of-Spain heard sub­mis­sions on Thurs­day and yes­ter­day found, af­ter ex­am­in­ing the in­for­ma­tion be­fore her, there was no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for an in­junc­tion.She said Lal­la's lawyer, Neal Bis­nath, had failed to pro­vide any ev­i­dence of ma­li­cious in­tent or ma­li­cious false­hoods in the sto­ry. Gob­in al­so warned that the mat­ter was of a "del­i­cate na­ture" and ad­vised cau­tion in mat­ters that might in­fringe the free­dom of the press.

She al­so not­ed that Bis­nath's fail­ure to pro­vide "sig­nif­i­cant" doc­u­ments–ev­i­dence of the trans­fer of funds from Lal­la to his son to prove he is no longer the own­er–af­fect­ed the out­come. She said there was no proof that Lal­la kept an "arm's dis­tance" from the com­pa­ny's op­er­a­tions."At the end of the day, I am not per­suad­ed," she said.Gob­in's de­ter­mi­na­tion was made on the ba­sis of her own in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Sun­day Guardian sto­ry, as well as sub­mis­sions and in­ter­pre­ta­tions from both sides.

Dur­ing Thurs­day's sub­mis­sions, when Mendes said the pa­per would no longer re­fer to Lal­la as the own­er of SIS, Bis­nath dis­missed that as a "red her­ring" of­fer by the pa­per but was quick­ly shut down by Gob­in."You have no ev­i­dence of that," she said.Lat­er in those same pro­ceed­ings, Bis­nath said once Lal­la was no longer re­ferred to as the own­er of SIS, he "would be hap­py" but Gob­in said the is­sue was not whether he was hap­py or not."It is what is in the law," she said.

Bis­nath cit­ed the ar­ti­cle's ref­er­ence to pub­lic state­ments on the Beetham project made by Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley as "ma­li­cious" and done with an in­tent to hurt his client, but Gob­in did not agree. She too not­ed that the is­sue was one of pub­lic in­ter­est.Row­ley has claimed that the award of the bil­lion dol­lar con­tract to a con­sor­tium led by SIS was im­prop­er prompt­ing the En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter. Ram­nar­ine lat­er de­fend­ed the award of the con­tract say­ing it was above board.

Lal­la, in his af­fi­davit, con­test­ed that he had on­ly be­come a per­son of pub­lic in­ter­est af­ter the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion was an­nounced, that he had been linked to SIS in the pub­lic mind and had "grown weary of the con­stant at­tacks."He al­so said that it was the me­dia that "im­put­ed" that he was a gov­ern­ment fi­nancier and was "in­volved in un­eth­i­cal con­duct."