De­spite the Privy Coun­cil or­der­ing for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) chair­man Jack Warn­er to pay $1.5 mil­lion to Re­al Time Sys­tems Ltd (RT­SL) for what he called a gift to the par­ty, cur­rent chair­man David Lee says the rul­ing has noth­ing to do with the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive.

Lee told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day he saw the news head­lines about Warn­er and his com­pa­nies, Ren­war In­vest­ments and CCAM and Com­pa­ny Ltd and their le­gal loss, but did not read the ar­ti­cles. He said it had no bear­ing on what was hap­pen­ing in the UNC to­day. He felt the best per­son to com­ment on that is­sue was for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, the UNC’s po­lit­i­cal leader in 2007 when Warn­er bor­rowed the mon­ey from RT­SL through Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices Ltd founder Kr­ish­na Lal­la. Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Pan­day, but calls to his phone went unan­swered.

“Ba­si­cal­ly, this case is about Mr Warn­er’s deal­ings with Kr­ish­na Lal­la and some­thing that has been go­ing on for a while. It was a per­son­al mat­ter be­tween Mr Warn­er and Mr Lal­la. I was not around the par­ty, not even a play­er, so the best peo­ple to an­swer that would be Mr Pan­day and those around at that time,” Lee said.

In 2007, Warn­er ap­proached Lal­la, say­ing he need­ed as­sis­tance for the Dr Joao Have­lange Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence to meet its fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions. Lal­la con­tact­ed sev­er­al busi­ness col­leagues, in­clud­ing RT­SL, who con­tributed $1.5 mil­lion. 

While Lal­la and RT­SL claim it was a loan, Warn­er said he want­ed to raise $20 mil­lion to fund the UNC’s Gen­er­al Elec­tions cam­paign and col­lab­o­rat­ed with Lal­la to source the funds. He told the court that the mon­ey was a do­na­tion to the UNC. In 2018, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad ruled in favour of RT­SL and or­dered Warn­er and his com­pa­nies to re­pay the loan. How­ev­er, Warn­er ap­pealed and got the Court of Ap­peal to set aside Seep­er­sad’s judg­ment. RT­SL took the mat­ter to the Privy Coun­cil, which con­curred with Seep­er­sad’s rul­ing.

Warn­er re­signed from the UNC as a Par­lia­men­tar­i­an in 2013 fol­low­ing a meet­ing with Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, then prime min­is­ter, at her home in Phillip­ine. It fol­lowed the pub­lic shar­ing of con­tents of CON­CA­CAF’s In­tegri­ty Com­mit­tee re­port that de­tailed al­le­ga­tions of mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment by Warn­er and for­mer CON­CA­CAF gen­er­al sec­re­tary Chuck Blaz­er.  

Af­ter years of run­ning his In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty, Warn­er’s po­lit­i­cal ca­reer dwin­dled un­til he resur­faced dur­ing this year’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions, work­ing along­side the UNC.

Lee ac­knowl­edged that the UNC wel­comed Warn­er as he en­dorsed Per­sad-Biss­esar’s lead­er­ship. How­ev­er, he said the court case, which has links to the UNC, has no bear­ing on Warn­er’s con­tin­ued ties with the par­ty.

“I do not think the two have any­thing to do with each oth­er.”

Lee said even the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment had is­sues with its for­mer trea­sur­er, An­dre Mon­teil.

“I do not think the present leader of the PNM will tell you the two have any­thing to do with each oth­er,” he said.

UNC Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal shared a sim­i­lar sen­ti­ment. He said the rul­ing does not af­fect the par­ty. Mooni­lal told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that he al­so saw the head­lines but did not read the ar­ti­cles or the judg­ment. He said that the mat­ter was 16 years old, and the par­ty had pro­gressed since then.