Derek Achong

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj has been grant­ed a life­line in his bid to ob­tain doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to Petrotrin's failed bil­lion-dol­lar World Gas-to-Liq­uids (GTL) project.

In a judge­ment de­liv­ered at the Unit­ed King­dom's Supreme Court in Lon­don this morn­ing, five Law Lords of the Privy Coun­cil ruled that High Court and the Court of Ap­peal judges were wrong to dis­miss Ma­haraj's law­suit over his fail­ure to ob­tain the doc­u­ments through a re­quest un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act.

Lord Phillip Sales, who wrote the 15-page judge­ment, said Ma­haraj had a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess in prov­ing his case and that there was a strong pub­lic in­ter­est in dis­clos­ing the doc­u­ments which would nor­mal­ly be con­sid­ered ex­empt un­der the leg­is­la­tion.

The doc­u­ments are the wit­ness state­ments of for­mer Petrotrin ex­ec­u­tives Char­maine Bap­tiste and An­tho­ny Chan Tack, which were vi­tal in the com­pa­ny's ar­bi­tra­tion against World GTL over the failed deal.

"So far as con­cerns pos­si­ble ben­e­fits for the pub­lic in­ter­est of dis­clo­sure of the Bap­tiste and Chan Tack state­ments, the Board con­sid­ers that it is ar­guable that they are of sig­nif­i­cant weight, with a view to se­cur­ing trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in re­la­tion to rel­e­vant de­ci­sions in a num­ber of re­spects," Sales said.

The Privy Coun­cil de­ci­sion means that Ma­haraj can now con­tin­ue to pur­sue his law­suit seek­ing dis­clo­sure be­fore a new High Court judge. It does not guar­an­tee that he will even­tu­al­ly be suc­cess­ful in his claim.

Bap­tiste and Chan Tack's state­ments in the ar­bi­tra­tion are be­ing sought as they were the cat­a­lyst for the with­draw­al of Petrotrin's bil­lion-dol­lar law­suit against for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Mal­colm Jones for breach of fidu­cia­ry du­ty over the deal.

In ear­ly 2016, British Queen's Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son ad­vised the then board that the case had to be dis­con­tin­ued as state­ments showed that the deal was a bad busi­ness de­ci­sion and not neg­li­gence.

Last month, Nel­son was charged along­side for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and for­mer Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen over a State le­gal fee kick­back con­spir­a­cy.

Nel­son has signed a plea agree­ment with the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) to plead guilty to the charges and tes­ti­fy against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen. The plea agree­ment hear­ing came up last week, but Nel­son was ab­sent as he was not giv­en enough no­tice to trav­el from the Unit­ed King­dom. Nel­son, who has been re­leased on $100,000 bail and al­lowed to leave the court due to con­cerns over his health and safe­ty, is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to T&T for an­oth­er hear­ing on June 4.

Iron­i­cal­ly, Ram­lo­gan led Ma­haraj's le­gal team in the lo­cal and for­eign courts. Ma­haraj was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Richard Clay­ton, QC, Christo­pher Knight, Chelsea Stew­art and Alvin Pariags­ingh. Petrotrin was rep­re­sent­ed by Thomas Roe, QC, and Do­minique Mar­tineau.

About the World GTL Deal

In 2005, Petrotrin and World GTL en­tered in­to a joint ven­ture to build, fi­nance and op­er­ate a gas-to-liq­uids plant in Trinidad. The $2.7 bil­lion plant was sup­posed to con­vert nat­ur­al gas in­to a more ozone-friend­ly liq­ue­fied form of diesel.

Al­though it was even­tu­al­ly com­plet­ed, the plant re­mained non-func­tion­al due to lack of ap­pro­pri­ate tech­nol­o­gy and was deemed scrap iron. There were al­so is­sues with con­struc­tion de­lays and ex­ten­sive cost over­runs.

Petrotrin ini­ti­at­ed ar­bi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings against the plant's for­mer own­er In­ter­na­tion­al Cham­ber of Com­merce and it even­tu­al­ly won. How­ev­er, the ar­bi­tra­tion award is yet to be paid.

World GTL ini­ti­at­ed its own ar­bi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings at Lon­don Court of In­ter­na­tion­al Ar­bi­tra­tion, which was al­so won by Petrotrin.

In 2012, the law­suit was filed against Jones and his fel­low board mem­bers as they caused Petrotrin to give a guar­an­tee in re­spect of the fi­nanc­ing pro­vid­ed by Cred­it Su­isse.