One of the five con­trac­tors named in the Gov­ern­ment’s $200 mil­lion car­tel claim, over con­tracts award­ed in the run-up to the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion, is seek­ing to have the case against them struck out be­fore it even goes to tri­al.

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Na­mal­co on Thurs­day be­gan pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions in the law­suit ini­ti­at­ed by the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (EM­BD).

Four oth­er con­trac­tors, three of the com­pa­ny’s for­mer of­fi­cials and for­mer Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal are al­so named in the law­suit.

In his sub­mis­sions, British Queen’s Coun­sel Si­mon Hugh­es re­peat­ed­ly de­scribed the case as spec­u­la­tive as he claimed that High Court judge James Aboud was be­ing asked to in­fer im­pro­pri­ety by the par­ties in the ab­sence of any con­crete ev­i­dence.

“It is com­plete­ly fan­ci­ful and lacks any sort of re­al­i­ty,” Hugh­es said.

Re­fer­ring to the as­pects of the law­suit, which claims that the par­ties con­spired to rig EM­BD’s ten­der­ing process, Hugh­es said there was no ev­i­dence which point­ed to the fact that his client was di­rect­ly in­volved in the al­leged plot in­clud­ing in the dozens of text mes­sages which form part of the ev­i­dence in the case.

Deal­ing with the al­le­ga­tion that his client par­tic­i­pat­ed in a process to in­flate bids, Hugh­es said it could be ar­gued that they were en­gaged in cov­er pric­ing.

Hugh­es ex­plained that with cov­er pric­ing, con­trac­tors would over­bid on con­tracts which they did not want or ex­pect to re­ceive in an ef­fort to pre­vent them from be­ing de-reg­is­tered as a pre­ferred con­trac­tor.

“Our ev­i­dence in­di­cates that there are oth­er plau­si­ble and in­no­cent rea­sons why this pric­ing oc­curs,” Hugh­es said, as he not­ed that all the con­tracts be­ing analysed in the case were award­ed to the low­est bid­der.

Hugh­es al­so re­ferred to the ev­i­dence of EM­BD’s ac­count­ing ex­pert who ad­mit­ted that pat­terns in the bids sub­mit­ted by the con­trac­tors could not di­rect­ly prove col­lu­sion be­tween them.

The car­tel claim cen­tres around 10 con­tracts for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of roads on lands be­long­ing to the for­mer Ca­roni (1975) Ltd, which were grant­ed to five con­trac­tors in Sep­tem­ber 2015.

Be­sides Na­mal­co, the oth­er con­trac­tors list­ed Fides, TN Ram­nauth and Com­pa­ny Ltd (TN Ram­nauth), Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing Ltd (Ramhit) and Kall Com­pa­ny Ltd (Kall­co).

Mooni­lal, for­mer EM­BD CEO Gary Par­mas­sar, for­mer di­vi­sion­al man­agers Mad­hoo Bal­roop and An­drew Walk­er are list­ed as par­ties to the claim along with the con­trac­tors.

The claim was filed in Oc­to­ber 2017, af­ter Na­mal­co sued EM­BD over its fail­ure to com­pen­sate the com­pa­ny for six con­tracts, val­ued at $1.3 bn, in­clud­ing two of which fell un­der car­tel claim.

Na­mal­co’s law­suit was split in two—its claim over the two car­tel con­tracts were stayed while its claims for pay­ment for four oth­er con­tracts con­tin­u­ing be­fore Jus­tice Ricky Rahim.

The sub­stan­tive law­suit of the car­tel claim is ex­pect­ed to go to tri­al af­ter Aboud de­ter­mines Na­mal­co’s pre­lim­i­nary ap­pli­ca­tion. EM­BD’s lawyers are ex­pect­ed to re­spond to the ap­pli­ca­tion on Friday.

Na­mal­co is one of the con­trac­tors who were re­cent­ly award­ed con­tracts for the com­ple­tion of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin.

Na­mal­co is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed Dereck Bal­li­ram and Raphael Mor­ton-Git­tens, while EM­BD is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by David Phillips, QC, and Ja­son Mootoo.